Month: October 2014

  • B’game: Suburban or Metropolitan? Duh.

    The Marin Independent Journal just published an article about a bill (AB 1537) that Gov. Moonbeam has signed giving Marin, San Rafael and Novato some relief from high-density "affordable" housing regulations that are being rammed down cities' throats.  Their assemblyman, Marc Levine, appears to have his act together on what should (and shouldn't) be a priority as an elected official.  He is quoted saying

    "Housing should be built in a manner that reflects the character of the communities in which we live. This bill encourages this by correcting an anomaly in law. This bill assures that the law reflects what Marin residents already know; we live in suburban communities, not a metropolitan county," Levine said.

    Being re-classified as "suburban" means those three cities'

    future affordable housing developments can be built at 20 units per acre versus the 30-units-per-acre previously required by the state. The law takes effect Jan. 1, 2015, and will apply to one eight-year housing cycle from 2015 to 2023, after which it will be reviewed.

    Let's put aside the theory that "affordable housing" is just a shell game that moves costs from one development to another or from part of one large development to another part.  This is progress.  Perhaps our Kevin Mullin could get cracking on the same initiative?

    An acre is 43,560 square feet or between 5.8 and 8.7 standard B'game lots.  So suburban reclassification would still equate to between 2.3 and 3.4 times our current single-family density.  San Mateo County is already 3.3 times as dense as Marin County!  Seems like plenty to me especially for something forced on us from Sacramento.  Kevin?  Jerry?  What say you two?

  • B’game at the Top

    My thanks to First Timer for catching this piece in the SF Comicle blog.  I believe it merits its own post

    The peninsula is flush with million dollar-plus properties, a fact that will come as a surprise to absolutely no one who has ever attempted to buy a home there. Still, it comes as a bit of a shock that the U.S. zip code with the most sales over $1 million isn’t in New York City or Beverly Hills, but Burlingame, according to a new report form Coldwell Banker.

    I'm not sure if Coldwell Banker realizes we share the zip code with Hillsborough.  Did they do a final sort of actual addresses or just the tally by zip code.  Perhaps one of our local realtors could elaborate as they wait for another house to come on the market?

  • Beware Buffett?

    In my perpetual quest to answer the question "what does this news mean to B'game?" today's chapter deals with the news that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway investment company just agreed to buy the country's fifth-largest auto retailer as a basis to "roll-up" the fragmented car dealership market.  Simultaneously "AutoNation and Lithia Motors have been snapping up smaller retail chains, often run by families who have been selling cars for generations." according to the WSJ.

    Car retailing is very, very, shall I add a third "very" important to B'game.  It was the leading sales tax generator in Q1 as you can see on the City website here.  About $900K came in that quarter and even with lines around the corner at the Apple store for the iPhone 6, it will take a lot of phones to come close to that.

    The Journal notes "there were almost 17,700 new-vehicle dealerships operating in 2013, of which more than half sell fewer than 400 units a year.  The average profit margin for them was a princely 2.2% — pretax."  Couple that with Tesla's non-dealership sales model where the sales tax goes to the city where the buyer lives not the city where it was sold and there are changes afoot.  Should be interesting to see if the robust Peninsula economy keeps car selling local or if the Oracle of Omaha will move into B'game.  In the meantime, shop B'game.

  • Friends With Benefits: The Risk of Working for Stockton

    If you read or watched any news source yesterday you saw the big ruling on the Stockton, CA bankruptcy case involving whether pension benefits (or liabilities) can take precedence over regular municipal debt.  The Times, Daily Post, Daily Journal, Wall Street Journal and Chron all covered the facts but here at the Voice we look ahead to the ramifications, especially for B'game.

    The judge was quoted in the County Times saying "California public employeee retirement law….is simply invalid in the face of the supremacy clause of the US Constitution." and he asked "Is CalPERS  a state unto itself?".  Then he answered his own question with a "no" ruling.

    The point for fiscally solid cities like B'game is that we need to realize a dollar of pension liability here is worth more than a dollar in places like Stockton or Vallejo or San Jose.  Hence the idea that we need to pay above-market-rate compensation to attract and retain "the best" has some limits.  It is incumbent on city leaders to be able to articulate this–and to not screw it up by doing fiscally irresponsible things.

     

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