Tying a bow around 2025 news

Happy New Year.

As 2026 starts, I need to clean up a few items from 2025:

• The Alameda County Taxpayers’ Association won a Pyrrhic victory when a  judge ruled that the Board of Supervisors violated the state’s opening meeting act, the Brown Act, when it acted quickly to appointed Wilma Chan’s chief of staff to her seat after she died when hit by a car when walking her dog. She was killed Nov. 3, 2021 and an item on the board agenda for Nov. 16 apparently concerned the process to appoint a successor. Instead, the supervisors, who had 60 days to make an appointment, selected Dave Brown. At this point, it means nothing because Brown has moved on and voters elected Lena Tam to the third district seat in November 2022. No sanctions or penalties.
• The long-awaited IKEA on the corner at Hacienda Drive and Interstate 580 will not be built. The company is pursuing different formats than its huge destination stores such as those in Emeryville and East Palo Alto. The parcel is zoned general commercial with a planned unit development specific to IKEA. Should another retailer want to utilize the prime parcel it likely would require an adjustment the plans followed by review and approval by the City Council. It remains perhaps the most desirable freeway frontage open land on the I-580 corridor.
• The Tri-Valley (other than Danville) has a big stake in the decisions being made about pumping in the San Joaquin Delta. In a typical year, about 80% of the valley’s water comes through the Harvey O. Banks pumps and then is conveyed into the valley via the South Bay Aqueduct. That serves historic vineyards such as Concannon and Wente and the Poppy Ridge golf complex as well as plants that supply treated drinking water throughout the valley. Livermore and Pleasanton supplement it with water from Del Valle Reservoir and groundwater pumps. The State Water Quality Control Board has been considering adjustments to pumping regulations that balance the “take, AKA death, of fish against the need for water that serves nearly 27 million Californians (State Water Project, not including the federal project) and more than a million acres of prime agricultural land. As would be expected, the feds want to update the rules based on current science while environmental interests and Delta leaders are fighting against changes and pushing for more water left to flow naturally. The entire system forces reverse north to south flows instead of east-to-west. During this weekend’s atmospheric river, lots of fresh water will flow through the Delta and out the Golden Gate. (The proposed Delta tunnel requires a much longer discussion)
• Thanks to Wall Street Journal editor and columnist James Freeman who wrote this week, “James Hankins is leaving Harvard after forty years as a history professor. He explains his decision at Compact:

‘I am coming to the end of a four-year retirement contract that I signed in the fall of 2021. That year I decided I no longer wanted to teach at Harvard. We had just endured almost two years under the university’s strict Covid regime. This was a form of emergency governance that mirrored to a fault the whole country’s uncritical acceptance of The Science and its proclivity, when backed by public power, for tyrannous invasions of private life…” Amen, could not have said it better myself. For decades I, like conservative commentator Dennis Prager, had considered the Center for Disease Control the gold standard for information. The statements and actions during the Covid epidemic coupled with what we’ve come to learn about the formerly esteemed Anthony Fauci (who apparently needed a Joe Biden pardon) reversed that view.

San Francisco-born ramen restaurant expands to DublinMarch 11, 2026 1:17 am

Fentanyl-laced vapes: The new crisisMarch 2, 2026 6:07 pm

Pleasanton police investigate string of home invasions, attacksMarch 6, 2026 11:48 am