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The Specialty Classic Car owners have been in the Sonoma County news lots this last couple of weeks after I reported the closure of the 40-year-old business on First Street.
Ken Mattson’s Sonoma County mansion was raided by FBI agents the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported earlier this month. The developer and his business partner, Tim LeFever, have been buying and upgrading luxury properties around the county valued at more than $240 million. The Santa Rosa paper reported that LeFever had emailed investors that funds were missing in an account that his partner controlled. Their firm took investor money and then pooled it to purchase properties.
The FBI has made no arrests in the case.
The Press Democrat also reported that a historic Julia Morgan-designed home that Mattson owns in Piedmont is now on the market for $9.9 million.
Stay tuned—more shoes likely will drop.
Some potential good news this week when Sen. Scott Wiener’s bill to permit a tax to support transit systems in the Bay Area hit a road block. Legislators in the South Bay, concerned that the bulk of the money would go to BART and San Francisco Muni, are concerned about that provision. Our East Bay legislators should join them.
BART, still living off a state budget allocation and having survived with federal bailout money, has yet to adjust staffing and service for the new ridership reality. BART always has received substantial fare box revenue, unlike most heavily subsidized public transit systems, but it keeps pushing ahead with empty trains with ridership down 40% from its 2018 high. Ridership already had started to slip in 2019 before the pandemic shutdown thrust the future of traditional downtowns into doubt.
BART directors, including newly installed Dublin Mayor Melissa Hernandez, need to address that new reality before holding their hands out for additional taxpayer funds. San Francisco residents and businesses will pay a tiny portion of the tax and receive the greatest benefit.
Joe Biden’s love of trains is showing in two recent federal grants. The government pledged $3.4 billion toward the very expensive project to tunnel CalTrains and (allegedly) the high-speed rail tracks from their current terminus a couple of miles into the Transbay Terminal on its bottom floor. State money from the cap-and-trade fund already has been allocated to electrify the CalTrain line along the peninsula, a project that could serve both systems. The federal funds cover about 41% of the cost and must be matched with state and local funds.
Meanwhile, the expensive final underground BART connection in San Jose, received a $500 million investment toward the $12.75 billion six-mile, four-station tunneling project. Local officials hope the feds eventually will contribute about half of the costs. Organizers already have ordered a $70 million tunneling machine instead of redoing a cost/benefit analysis given the new reality and updating the estimated ridership, a necessary step before committing to what was a worthy goal years ago, but now is questionable, at best. The 2026 opening date now is estimated at 2037 while costs have tripled.
