President Joe Biden arrived in California last week and announced a $600 million drive to help coastal communities cope with rising sea levels.

Just days earlier, a report of a sharp rise in sea temperatures was released, startling scientists who were unsure whether the rise was due to natural phenomena and how much to global warming.

The president also spoke about $2.3 billion aimed at making the country’s power grid more resilient, including $67 million for California to protect power lines from extreme weather and natural disasters.

This comes on the heels of an unsuccessful attempt to include comprehensive permit reform in the deficit ceiling agreement to speed up the expansion of power transmission lines.

Supporters of the proposal, including Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, say that without accelerating grid construction, it will be difficult — perhaps even impossible — to bring more clean energy generated at remote wind and solar farms to populated areas in the future bring to.

In another climate change warning, scientists said the Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than ever before due to global warming. No, the President has not announced funding for glacier protection on the trip.

Gloomy news about global warming is constant. The timing of these latest developments may have coincided with the President’s visit, but they underscore the grave challenge facing Biden, Gov. Gavin Newsom and others in their bid to slow climate change.

Biden appeared with Newsom at the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center and Preserve in Palo Alto Monday before heading to various fundraisers for the campaign.

“Resilience is important,” Biden said in announcing the shoreline funding. “I have visited many places across the country that clearly demonstrate that climate change is an existential threat to humanity.”

He spoke about climate-related investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill — and how he fended off Republican efforts to thwart them during recent debt ceiling negotiations.

“Not only have we protected some of the climate money and clean energy regulations. We protected everyone,” Biden said.

But the White House couldn’t agree with Republicans on changing environmental regulations to streamline the permitting process. Some environmental groups also opposed the changes, particularly those proposed for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

While the Debt Agreement included provisions to accelerate some infrastructure projects under NEPA, it did not pave the way for accelerating large-scale transmission line construction.

That was the aim of the BIG WIRES Act, which was part of the Debt Deal discussions but was ultimately left out. The legislation was written by Peters and Senator John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.

“Our work to reform the outdated way we authorize and build energy projects is just beginning,” Peters said in a statement after the deal was reached without his bill. “This debate has put a spotlight on our climate reality: we cannot achieve our climate and clean energy goals without comprehensive permitting reform.”

Newsom has his own proposal to authorize a cleanup for California, but has expressed frustration at opposition from dozens of environmental groups. Many are usually his allies but have criticized his plan to expedite the permitting process under the California Environmental Quality Act.

“This is ridiculous,” Newsom told the New York Times. “These people write reports and protest. But we have to build. You can’t take climate and the environment seriously without reforming the state’s permitting and procurement processes. . .”

“I made the climate laws last year and the same groups celebrated that. But that doesn’t mean anything if we can’t deliver. That was the what; that’s the how.”

Without such changes, Newsom said, California could lose hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding for clean energy programs to competition from other states.

Despite years of talks, efforts to fundamentally change CEQA have been unsuccessful. Even some who support the goals of the state’s core environmental law say it drags out the permitting process and has been abused to impede development, gain leverage in contract negotiations and block competitor projects.

But CEQA has also been used to stop numerous malicious projects.

While proponents of the streamlining proposals say they include adequate environmental protections, critics don’t think so.

Biden’s sweeping permit push angered some environmentalists, but they were outraged that the debt agreement allows for expedited processing of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a gas-carrying pipeline pushed by Senator Joe Manchin, DW.Va.

Climate activists were also not pleased with the earlier approval of ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil project in Alaska in March.

Still, in the week leading up to his California trip, Biden received early re-election support from four of the country’s largest environmental groups — the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and NextGen America.

“They have done far more than any other government in history to address the climate crisis and advance clean energy solutions and environmental justice,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, told CNN.

Biden has enacted sweeping climate legislation and poured at least $370 billion into clean energy and electric vehicles, the Times noted. His government has also proposed tough regulations on pollution from cars, trucks and power plants, aimed at bringing the country’s emissions down to their lowest levels in decades.

This apparently made it easier for environmentalists to accept the trade-offs on fossil fuels.

Tweet of the week

Goes to Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci), former political writer for Politico and the San Francisco Chronicle.

“(Judge) Kagan worried about ethics of free bagels when (Judge) Thomas accepted lavish trips from billionaire: report | Salon.com. (May 11)”

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To paraphrase Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry in the 1973 classic Magnum Force, a governor must know his limits.

Even a governor with little political opposition and a very friendly, usually cooperative legislature has limits to power.

This time Governor Gavin Newsom may have found his limits. Key lawmakers are fighting back against his late-introduced law to expedite construction of a highly controversial water tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

As is his pattern, Newsom attempts to squeeze through legislation at the last minute, denying lawmakers and the public adequate time to evaluate and discuss the proposal. This really gets on the nerves of lawmakers, whether they are leaders or backbenchers.

“It feels disrespectful to him [legislative] process,” State Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) said at a Senate committee hearing on the governor’s proposal this month.

“To try to do something like this at the last minute on such a controversial issue is so inappropriate,” said Rep. Carlos Villapudua (D-Stockton).

Newsom did so last year and later boasted about his success in blocking lawmakers. Towards the end of his two-year term, the governor sent the legislature an ambitious package of climate action proposals, and most of them passed.

A governor can “block” lawmakers by holding their bills hostage. He could refuse to sign a bill written by a lawmaker who votes against his proposal. By waiting long enough for a governor to submit his bills to the legislature, he also greatly reduces the time opponents have to organize opposition.

That year, Newsom waited until May 19 to propose a draft infrastructure bill, which he was scheduled to pass by lawmakers within five weeks as part of the annual state budget. What he proposes has nothing to do with the budget. But he can hold lawmakers’ favorite budget items hostage to their votes for his proposal

In addition, the governor’s legislation can be enshrined in budget “trailer” legislation that does not require scrutiny by policy committees.

Newsom proposed a sweeping package of 11 bills that would facilitate the construction of clean energy, transportation and water projects, including the Delta Tunnel.

This would be achieved essentially by reducing environmental protection. Lawsuits filed under the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 would have to be completed within 270 days unless a judge determines it is impracticable. Such lawsuits can drag on for years.

As for the tunnel, the vote required for approval by a key Delta oversight committee would be reduced. Protection for endangered wintering cranes would be relaxed. And the role of local interests in the design of the tunnel would be weakened, they fear.

Governors have tried for six decades to build this project in some form, but have been repulsed by grassroots activists or state voters.

The delta is California’s most important water hub, serving 27 million people and irrigating 3 million hectares.

“It’s the backbone of our state’s water system,” says Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the state agency for natural resources. “We have borrowed time in the Delta. It is highly vulnerable to saltwater intrusion and is at risk of sea rise as a result of climate change. And there is a risk of earthquakes.

“We cannot remain in limbo year after year because of litigation. Let’s figure out how to streamline the litigation and give the tunnel a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

And if it doesn’t work, he says, the state can “go back to the drawing board and take a different approach.”

Project opponents – particularly residents of the delta, including farmers – claim that future saltwater intrusion is one reason the tunnel should not be built. It would siphon water from the fresher northern delta before it could flow through the saline southern end, as it does now, pushing back salt water intruding from San Francisco Bay.

The saltier water would be disastrous for Stockton, smaller Delta communities and agriculture, opponents say.

As for seismic hazard, no earthquake has ever damaged a delta dam and there are no major faults under the estuary. Anyway, couldn’t a major tremor damage an underground tunnel?

The fishing industry and boaters fear that reducing freshwater flow through the delta will decimate salmon stocks and exacerbate toxic algae that clog waterways in summer.

“The whole system collapsed,” says Barry Nelson, advisor to the Golden State Salmon Assn. That’s partly because of the huge fishing pumps in the Southern Delta and government regulations that often deprive baby salmon of strong enough water flow when attempting to migrate to the sea.

“The tunnel would make that possible [state] to dramatically increase pumping capacity from the Sacramento River system and further reduce the salmon population,” says Nelson.

That would depend on how the tunnel is regulated. But the opponents of the tunnel do not trust the state regulatory authorities.

Villapudua authored a letter to Newsom and lawmakers, signed by 10 lawmakers from both parties, asking for the tunnel project to be removed from the governor’s package.

“It wasn’t very wise to include the delta,” says Senator John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), a former natural resources secretary who helped persuade the then-governor to do so. Jerry Brown’s failed twin tunnel project.

“A $16 billion project like [the tunnel] is likely to have a significant impact on a large, ecologically sensitive and important area. Something of this magnitude should not be rushed through an environmental assessment process.”

Oh yeah. The Cost: Virtually everyone knows that the price for this 45-mile, 39-foot-wide tunnel would be much higher than advertised. And so far there isn’t even any funding for it. Water users would pay.

Newsom should listen to Dirty Harry.

The post Column: On delta tunnel, Newson ought to heed Soiled Harry’s sound recommendation appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

— William Boucher

“I grew up in South County, in Morgan Hill to be precise. I attended high school in San Jose and spent my first career there. After a while, it just got too much—too much traffic, too fast a pace, too many plastic people, too much division between haves and haves, the old ethnic neighborhoods were shrinking… When my wife had the opportunity to move to Sonoma County, we jumped at it the opportunity. Sonoma County reminded me a lot of Santa Clara County growing up. More than thirty years later we’ve built a network of friends and really feel a sense of community rather than a speed-dating group of superficial acquaintances. I’m really glad you found the kind of environment where you can thrive. From my very biased point of view, the city is great to visit, but I don’t want to live there. Thank you for sharing so much about yourself in the article, it took strength and courage, and I commend you for it.”

– Lee Cretin

“While I’m proud to live in Santa Rosa and proud to have the SRJC and the Schultz Museum, Ms. Torres is right. As a non-foodie and non-wine drinker, there isn’t much to do here. I remember watching the Crushers baseball team in high school. And I miss the convenience of the robust public transport in big cities. What I like to see in Sonoma County is an improvement in the public education system. Not only from a safety point of view (in view of the recent violence in schools), but also in terms of content. I would like to see more hands-on courses and skills development courses. Maybe there could be a project with the SRJC. A semester/year course that gives a general overview of the different types of jobs and explains the basic skills in each individual job. Maybe speakers from local industry with demonstrations. Also Growing Up 101: how banking and homeownership work, what it takes for a car to work, how city, state, and local government works, how to sew on a button. Real World, Practical Preparation; Not everyone goes to college. Given the cost of living, I probably won’t be moving to San Francisco or any other major city, so I’m finding things to do. And Santa Rosa, like most cities, has a lot to deal with in terms of homelessness, public roads/construction, and crime/recidivism. I think that working on improving education – after several years – can help with that.”

– Anne Lee

“I absolutely agree. Apparently more than half of my high school seniors had moved to LA. I answered before reading the whole question, so I plan on leaving. It’s very difficult to start a new life here to create new events and things to do. It was beautiful to look at but too quiet.”

– Ben Lash

“Wow, are you driving around with your eyes closed? Take a look at the Union Square and VanNess Ave areas. City hall. Tourism has declined in SF for good reason. If SR is too boring, maybe you should try Petaluma, it’s closer to your beloved San Francisco.”

– Gary Doolittle

“Born and raised in Santa Rosa and will never leave Sonoma County. And yes, San Francisco has become a gross place. I couldn’t imagine starting a family there. In fact, our family stopped going to San Francisco altogether because of how bad things got there. I never thought an entire city could smell like urine. Sonoma County strong!”

– Joy Roybal

“Santa Rosa and Sonoma County are communities of community. Each of them has a special connection to the residents. No reason to go unless you are looking for a different community. For fanboys like me, no city ever “needs” Batman. The whole parable of the cloaked crusader says that the city has lost its way. Furthermore, the extreme state of hopelessness produces a necessary agent of change outside of failed systems. SF has hope. Sonoma County has hope. Because people have hope. That’s why I live here.”

– Jim Leddy

Sevastopol

“Having not grown up in San Francisco 50 years ago, she has no real understanding of how the city has changed. As for her assessment of Santa Rosa, playing up the trauma we’ve all experienced from the fires while implying that it’s boring is lazy. Chappelle made a couple of brief visits to Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, but since she probably wasn’t at the show and it wasn’t making the news, she may have mistakenly assumed he hadn’t said anything negative or critical about the area. It’s nice to be here, it’s a slower pace but if I want some action I can go to the city. If I want to see a Broadway show, musical, comedy or concert, it’s an hour away.”

– Matt Schweifler

“I agree with her – San Francisco is magical! I like Santa Rosa – for all the fun happenings and curiosities, the amazing views, the great food and the wineries, breweries etc and it’s quieter – which I appreciate now but maybe didn’t when I was young. I couldn’t bear to live in a full throttle place like SF right now, but that’s not SF’s fault. It’s just a stage of life thing – maybe I would feel different if I was loaded down and could live anywhere in the city I wanted. Unfortunately, SF isn’t all that affordable for young people – or for people of any age without quadrupling, but I appreciate their defense of SF to all its naysayers. It’s not perfect – but it’s magical – no question about it!”

– Lori

“I definitely agree. i love the city The energy was amazing in my twenties, but after getting married and having kids, Sonoma is my home. We go into town and yes there are homeless people and it’s very sad but it doesn’t stop me. I wish there was an answer. We took the train and the ferry and spent a few days walking around, and when you walk out of a Giants game and hear Tony Bennett singing, my heart is gone and tears come to my eyes.”

– Candice Mick

san francisco

“Born in San Francisco in 1957, moved to Santa Rosa when he was three months old. I grew up in Santa Rosa, but my parents worked and played in the city. I did my residency at Community Hospital in Chanate and worked there part-time for 18 years before becoming Sutter and then Sutter Mark West Springs. Moved back to San Francisco after Tubbs fire, retired from Sutter Santa Rosa three years ago. I miss Santa Rosa every day, but the city is also my home. I will defend both; They are two sides of a beautiful coin.”

– Peace the crown

“What do you say about the approximately 240 deaths from fentanyl OD? It is sad that some progressives either overlook the crisis entirely or simply refuse to acknowledge it and continue to point to crime statistics to distract from the problems we face. PS-SFPD data shows that the number of homicides has increased by 26% this year. The money Breed invests goes to corrupt non-profit organizations that benefit from the status quo (if they fix the problem, their source of money disappears). So please, if you really love SF (as you do), it’s tough love time. We must acknowledge and accept the situation and work together to resolve it. Getting on the defensive, getting involved in politics, and blaming Republicans (I’m a left-leaning independent) and that’s bad for our city.”

– Smile

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Governor Gavin Newsom bills himself as a protector of wildlife, so you wouldn’t think he takes water from baby salmon and there are almonds.

Or with pistachios or cotton or alfalfa.

Especially as California just got drenched in the wettest three-week streak of storms on record and headed for another powerful snow and rain cloud.

But Newsom and his water officials still claim we’re suffering from a drought – apparently it’s a never-ending drought. So last week they used this as a reason to drastically reduce the river flows needed by migrating small salmon when the water is needed to irrigate crops in the San Joaquin Valley in the summer.

Still calling our wet weather a drought is a shameful distortion of a word — a propaganda tool aimed at convincing people that they should continue to conserve water. People should, but don’t have to, be addressed like children.

What Newsom and government officials are really talking about is a long-term water shortage. It is caused by the fact that California has more agriculture and people than what nature can provide us with can support. And it is made even more problematic by the uncertain prospects of climate change.

But water scarcity doesn’t necessarily mean drought. That means we’re not recycling, conserving and replenishing aquifers enough – and not wisely allocating what we have.

Agriculture uses 80% of California’s tapped water. The rest is allocated for domestic use – business and housing.

Calculated differently, 40% of all water – tapped or untapped – ends up in agriculture and 10% goes into households. The other 50% goes directly into the environment – flowing down rivers, irrigating what’s left of our wetlands, and flowing into the ocean. And on their way to the ocean, river courses carry young salmon out to sea, where they grow up.

The Sacramento River is the second largest salmon producer on the West Coast after the Columbia.

But salmon numbers have plummeted along the Sacramento in recent decades, largely due to dams blocking historic spawning grounds and the diversion of water to farms and towns.

Also, the installation in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta messes up the salmon. Huge pumps sending water south through aqueducts maul the critters or drag them into the grips of lurking predators.

Each year there are four salmon spawning runs up the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. By far the largest is in Sacramento. Autumn is the most important. Last fall, fewer than 62,000 fish returned to spawn, the second-lowest in 70 years. In the previous autumn it had been almost 132,000.

Those are steep declines from 448,000 in 2013 and 873,000 in 2002.

Meanwhile, almonds – one of our thirstiest crops – are thriving. We span up to 1.6 million acres primarily in the San Joaquin Valley. California produces 80% of the world’s almonds. Around two thirds are exported.

“Salmon numbers have declined significantly in Newsom every year since he became governor, by a third,” says Barry Nelson, a longtime water consultant and environmentalist.

But should Newsom be held responsible? We have experienced a real drought.

“Absolutely,” says Nelson. “No doubt the governor is responsible. He waives standards to protect the salmon. The state’s failure to protect salmon has turned bad news into disaster.”

“In the same four years that the salmon crashed,” adds Nelson, “almond acreage has grown by 320,000 acres.”

Newsom signed an executive order on Feb. 13 allowing salmon protections to be suspended. It was as if we were still suffering from drought and every drop of water was needed for people and food production.

“To protect public health and safety, it is critical that the state promptly take certain emergency measures to prepare for and mitigate the effects of drought conditions,” the governor said in his order.

The governor-appointed State Water Resources Control Board dutifully obligated and suspended a requirement for rivers through the delta’s estuary, which salmon need at this time of year to drive them into the ocean.

The suspension essentially halved flows through at least the end of March. The water is stored in reservoirs.

But the big reservoirs were already filling up from the January storms. And the Sierra’s snowpack was deep — at 173% of normal for the past week.

“It’s not even a drought. If we can’t create good conditions for fish in a year like this, we’re completely bankrupt as resource managers,” says Gary Bobker, director of programs at the Bay Institute, an environmental organization focused on the San Francisco Bay area.

Young salmon – about 4 inches long – need strong river currents to carry them across the delta into San Francisco Bay and out of the Golden Gate.

“They’re bad swimmers,” says John McManus, president of the Golden State Salmon Assn. “They have evolved to be washed down by rivers in the spring like nature does. But that was turned on its head. Now the water will be released for agriculture in the summer.”

This is because agriculture has more political weight.

McManus says the governor “doesn’t answer our calls or doesn’t respond to our emails.”

“The single biggest problem for salmon in California is the lack of spring flow in rivers,” claims McManus.

Maybe 1% make it to the ocean.

Eric Oppenheimer, the deputy chief executive officer of the water board, told me, “We’re not saying that [the flow reduction] has no effect” on Pisces. “We’re just saying that we don’t think the change will result in any undue impact.”

The State Department of Fish and Wildlife agrees in principle.

“At this point, we’re still in a drought,” Oppenheimer said. “Sometimes we find ourselves in a drought and a flood at the same time.”

That doesn’t make any sense to me.

Nor does cutting back the water for struggling baby salmon when it’s pouring rain.

The post Column: Newsom cares extra about almond growers than California’s salmon fishery appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

By Tom Elijah

It’s a phenomenon from New York to Dallas to Fresno to Los Angeles that seemed inevitable to some as millions of Californians became the first Americans ordered to work from home to help combat the spread of COVID-19.

This pandemic is not over yet, although the public is fed up with it. Covid’s viral variants are still haunting the world as their third winter of plaguing people begins to wane.

But millions of employees who have had a taste of setting their own hours and creating their own work environment are still reluctant to return to the office more than once or twice a week. As a result, vacant office buildings now cover hundreds of millions of square feet in California alone.

The empty offices made it clear from the first onslaught of the pandemic that housing remodeling would become an important part of the solution to California’s housing crisis, if not its predominant response.

Now that is becoming a reality, the only inexplicable thing about it is the fact that it has taken three full years to go from an obvious concept to a grand reality.

The conversion of office buildings has become so real:

Website rentcafe.com reports that more than 4,130 apartments and condos will be built from office space conversions this year in Los Angeles alone. More than 1,000 new units are planned in Fresno this year, more than 500 more in San Francisco, 450 in Sacramento and about 200 in Oakland. Even cities that have never gotten into this game are now active in remodeling: 372 remodeled units are slated to open in Alameda this year, 250 in San Clemente, and 250 in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, not in the announced total of city ​​counted.

A total of at least 10,000 new residential units in former office space will be opened this year.

None of these conversions will be very controversial as they do not occupy new floor space, do not alter existing neighborhood views and profiles, and therefore do not provoke the environmental lawsuits that delay so many California construction projects, including a major addition to the State Capitol.

Surely many more units will follow, especially if this year’s already approved crop brings in significant rents and purchase prices. That’s almost certain, as new units range from street-level apartments, with significant outside noise, to penthouses with sea views.

The number of units running debunks naysayers who claimed, when the idea first surfaced shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the country’s first home bans in early 2020, that remodeling was more difficult to approve and build than new construction.

That’s not true, especially since the state passed a law last fall that makes such permits virtually automatic when they’re applied for.

Objections that office layouts were wildly different from residential buildings were quickly dispelled as the necessary plumbing and electrical changes, as well as moving drywall within existing interiors, proved less complex than some had anticipated.

Moreover, the conversions are already becoming a fiscal boon for struggling local governments, whose property taxes have begun to fall as office building vacancy rates remain high. Also, as office rental income declined, estimated valuations could control the amount of property tax money going to local schools, sewer and water districts and other local governments.

But if the converted units are sold, they are subject to Proposition 13’s 1 percent tax on the final purchase price of a property. While business tax rates tend to remain relatively stable for decades, residential taxes can rise quickly as units change hands.

At the same time, conversions are beginning to bail out real estate funds, whose office rental income has fallen, as have the dividends they paid investors. All of this happens when former office space finds a new, productive use.

Bottom line: Office remodeling, first recommended by this column in April 2020, is now the wave of the future in California and elsewhere, and it’s a boon for everyone from first-time homebuyers and renters to real estate owners and local governments.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His fourth edition book, The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It, is now available in softcover. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net.

The post Column: The Inevitable Conversions Start Multiplying appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

By Tom Elijah

It’s a phenomenon from New York to Dallas to Fresno to Los Angeles that seemed inevitable to some as millions of Californians became the first Americans ordered to work from home to help combat the spread of COVID-19.

This pandemic is not over yet, although the public is fed up with it. Covid’s viral variants are still haunting the world as their third winter of plaguing people begins to wane.

But millions of employees who have had a taste of setting their own hours and creating their own work environment are still reluctant to return to the office more than once or twice a week. As a result, vacant office buildings now cover hundreds of millions of square feet in California alone.

The empty offices made it clear from the first onslaught of the pandemic that housing remodeling would become an important part of the solution to California’s housing crisis, if not its predominant response.

Now that is becoming a reality, the only inexplicable thing about it is the fact that it has taken three full years to go from an obvious concept to a grand reality.

The conversion of office buildings has become so real:

Website rentcafe.com reports that more than 4,130 apartments and condos will be built from office space conversions this year in Los Angeles alone. More than 1,000 new units are planned in Fresno this year, more than 500 more in San Francisco, 450 in Sacramento and about 200 in Oakland. Even cities that have never gotten into this game are now active in remodeling: 372 remodeled units are slated to open in Alameda this year, 250 in San Clemente, and 250 in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, not in the announced total of city ​​counted.

A total of at least 10,000 new residential units in former office space will be opened this year.

None of these conversions will be very controversial as they do not occupy new floor space, do not alter existing neighborhood views and profiles, and therefore do not provoke the environmental lawsuits that delay so many California construction projects, including a major addition to the State Capitol.

Surely many more units will follow, especially if this year’s already approved crop brings in significant rents and purchase prices. That’s almost certain, as new units range from street-level apartments, with significant outside noise, to penthouses with sea views.

The number of units running debunks naysayers who claimed, when the idea first surfaced shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the country’s first home bans in early 2020, that remodeling was more difficult to approve and build than new construction.

That’s not true, especially since the state passed a law last fall that makes such permits virtually automatic when they’re applied for.

Objections that office layouts were wildly different from residential buildings were quickly dispelled as the necessary plumbing and electrical changes, as well as moving drywall within existing interiors, proved less complex than some had anticipated.

Moreover, the conversions are already becoming a fiscal boon for struggling local governments, whose property taxes have begun to fall as office building vacancy rates remain high. Also, as office rental income declined, estimated valuations could control the amount of property tax money going to local schools, sewer and water districts and other local governments.

But if the converted units are sold, they are subject to Proposition 13’s 1 percent tax on the final purchase price of a property. While business tax rates tend to remain relatively stable for decades, residential taxes can rise quickly as units change hands.

At the same time, conversions are beginning to bail out real estate funds, whose office rental income has fallen, as have the dividends they paid investors. All of this happens when former office space finds a new, productive use.

Bottom line: Office remodeling, first recommended by this column in April 2020, is now the wave of the future in California and elsewhere, and it’s a boon for everyone from first-time homebuyers and renters to real estate owners and local governments.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His fourth edition book, The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It, is now available in softcover. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net.

The post Column: The Inevitable Conversions Start Multiplying appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Maybe it’s just me but what’s so riveting about the Winter Olympics?

Outside of ski jumping, slalom skiing, bobsled, luge and hockey, it’s either X Games on steroids or figure skating that’s more boring than watching ice melt.

And then there’s curling. It’s essentially shuffleboard on ice by people who look more like bowlers than athletes. big deal I’d much rather watch an Eskimo Pie eating contest. Don’t laugh. Much of the Winter Olympics menu is made-up novelty competitions.

The Winter Olympics were created to cut countries who are mostly frozen tundra a break because they’re terrible at real sports thanks to fields too slippery to practice on.

After all, when’s the last time a guy from Lapland quarterbacked in the Super Bowl or pitched in Game 7 of the World Series or won the Masters or reached the Wimbledon final? I rest my case.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, maybe it’s just me but is Joe Burrow the only reason the Cincinnati Bengals are in this year’s Grand Spectacle? The Bengals were the Bungles for about 317 years until they drafted this kid.

The Los Angeles Rams, who traded away all their future No. 1 draft picks into the next century just to stockpile this year’s team with superstars, are favored to win the Super Bowl.

So what? Even though Cincinnati’s offensive line couldn’t block a hat let alone that ferocious Los Angeles pass rush, destiny is riding on the rocket right arm of Burrow.

Only two quarterbacks have ever won a national championship in college and the Super Bowl. A couple of Joes in Namath with Alabama and the New York Jets and Montana with Notre Dame and the San Francisco 49ers.

FYI, Burrow won a national championship at LSU. Talk about an omen jumping up and slapping you in the face. Want to bet a cup of Joe on this Joe joining Namath and Montana in pulling off a college/pro championship tandem?

Maybe it’s just me but why doesn’t the Super Bowl halftime entertainment ever feature Snoop Dogg rapping Tennyson’s poetry about the British cavalry?

Maybe it’s just me but isn’t it way past time we stop making Americans file federal, state and local income taxes?

Just deduct the taxes from our paychecks and be done with it. I’ll gladly live without a tax return if you spare me the paperwork. Better yet, let our rich Uncle Sam automatically send all of us a healthy tax refund and let Joe Biden worry about inflation soaring like a Jeff Bezos rocket.

Maybe it’s just me but I found it hard to feel sorry for the folks at the Jersey shore who got buried up to their eyebrows in snow last weekend. How many times have we long-suffering folks in Berks County been entombed in an avalanche while the beachcombers only got rain?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that people who don’t sweat anything never have dehydrated spirits?

Maybe it’s just me but why do women need bedroom closets bigger than Japan?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that promise and fulfillment don’t always share the same zip code?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that the night becomes crowded with hostile voices and vices in hard, mean neighborhoods known to erupt in anarchy?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever wonder why salesmen whose line is doorknobs never sell door to door?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever feel an arctic wind shake a joist or beam loose in your spinal infrastructure?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that people whose ego is their personal chauffeur never seem to go anywhere?

Maybe it’s just me but do politicians ever get tired of pounding the pudding out of one another?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that guys with broad shoulders have trouble finding work as a chimney sweep?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that life has a darker side when viewed through the neon prism of a cocktail lounge?

Mike Zielinski, a resident of Berks County, is a columnist, novelist, playwright and screenwriter.

The post Reflections column – What’s so riveting in regards to the Winter Olympics? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Maybe it’s just me but what’s so riveting about the Winter Olympics?

Outside of ski jumping, slalom skiing, bobsled, luge and hockey, it’s either X Games on steroids or figure skating that’s more boring than watching ice melt.

And then there’s curling. It’s essentially shuffleboard on ice by people who look more like bowlers than athletes. big deal I’d much rather watch an Eskimo Pie eating contest. Don’t laugh. Much of the Winter Olympics menu is made-up novelty competitions.

The Winter Olympics were created to cut countries who are mostly frozen tundra a break because they’re terrible at real sports thanks to fields too slippery to practice on.

After all, when’s the last time a guy from Lapland quarterbacked in the Super Bowl or pitched in Game 7 of the World Series or won the Masters or reached the Wimbledon final? I rest my case.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, maybe it’s just me but is Joe Burrow the only reason the Cincinnati Bengals are in this year’s Grand Spectacle? The Bengals were the Bungles for about 317 years until they drafted this kid.

The Los Angeles Rams, who traded away all their future No. 1 draft picks into the next century just to stockpile this year’s team with superstars, are favored to win the Super Bowl.

So what? Even though Cincinnati’s offensive line couldn’t block a hat let alone that ferocious Los Angeles pass rush, destiny is riding on the rocket right arm of Burrow.

Only two quarterbacks have ever won a national championship in college and the Super Bowl. A couple of Joes in Namath with Alabama and the New York Jets and Montana with Notre Dame and the San Francisco 49ers.

FYI, Burrow won a national championship at LSU. Talk about an omen jumping up and slapping you in the face. Want to bet a cup of Joe on this Joe joining Namath and Montana in pulling off a college/pro championship tandem?

Maybe it’s just me but why doesn’t the Super Bowl halftime entertainment ever feature Snoop Dogg rapping Tennyson’s poetry about the British cavalry?

Maybe it’s just me but isn’t it way past time we stop making Americans file federal, state and local income taxes?

Just deduct the taxes from our paychecks and be done with it. I’ll gladly live without a tax return if you spare me the paperwork. Better yet, let our rich Uncle Sam automatically send all of us a healthy tax refund and let Joe Biden worry about inflation soaring like a Jeff Bezos rocket.

Maybe it’s just me but I found it hard to feel sorry for the folks at the Jersey shore who got buried up to their eyebrows in snow last weekend. How many times have we long-suffering folks in Berks County been entombed in an avalanche while the beachcombers only got rain?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that people who don’t sweat anything never have dehydrated spirits?

Maybe it’s just me but why do women need bedroom closets bigger than Japan?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that promise and fulfillment don’t always share the same zip code?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that the night becomes crowded with hostile voices and vices in hard, mean neighborhoods known to erupt in anarchy?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever wonder why salesmen whose line is doorknobs never sell door to door?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever feel an arctic wind shake a joist or beam loose in your spinal infrastructure?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that people whose ego is their personal chauffeur never seem to go anywhere?

Maybe it’s just me but do politicians ever get tired of pounding the pudding out of one another?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that guys with broad shoulders have trouble finding work as a chimney sweep?

Maybe it’s just me but did you ever notice that life has a darker side when viewed through the neon prism of a cocktail lounge?

Mike Zielinski, a resident of Berks County, is a columnist, novelist, playwright and screenwriter.

The post Reflections column – What’s so riveting in regards to the Winter Olympics? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.