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No affordability crisis
There is no affordable housing crisis! If houses were not affordable, the prices would drop until they were purchased. This happened in the housing crash of 2008.
Jobs drive real estate. California has a very strong job market of high paying jobs in technology, finance, entertainment and so on that drives the price of housing.
California also does things like Title 24 that dramatically increases the cost of housing. A friend built a house in Hermosa Beach and he was required to put in a $30,000 water recapture system to water his 75 square feet of yard. Ridiculous!
It’s a differential of income issue that makes many houses unaffordable. The solution is to recruit industries inland where land is cheaper. When I worked at Apple, they moved customer support and accounting jobs to Austin because it was cheaper. Employees moved there and bought homes.
Whenever the politicians use the word “crisis”, it’s to incite and deceive. It’s not a housing affordability crisis; it’s differential of job types. Politicians don’t want to say retail and fast food workers need to get better jobs to buy a house.
– Ray Joseph
Of course Cook’s opens after we move
My wife and I are former long-term residents of Pleasanton (1966 to 2021!). We relocated a few years ago to be close to our daughter. Pleasanton Weekly is still a requirement in our lives. We loved Pleasanton.
In a recent edition of your paper, we enjoyed the articles about the long-awaited opening of Cook’s Seafood. For years we chuckled each time we drove past “Cook’s Seafood … Opening Soon”. We saw the sign for about four years. Now after a long wait of eight years, Pleasanton will be able to enjoy the seafood place.
Eight years! Did you ever think that the Golden Gate Bridge was built in four?
Anyway, soon we plan to return to town for a reunion. You can be sure we will patronize Cook’s when we come.
Love your paper!
– Bill Lathlean, by USPS mail
We did it – together!
We’re thrilled to share some amazing news: together, we reached our $40,000 goal — and unlocked the full match for Valley Humane Society’s Medical Assistance Fund!
Thanks to the compassion of this incredible community, $85,048 is now available to provide urgent, lifesaving veterinary care for the animals who need it most.
Whether you made a gift, shared our campaign or cheered us on — you were part of this.
Because of you, shelter animals will receive critical surgeries. Families with limited resources will have access to spay/neuter surgeries. Pets of people reliant upon supportive services will get the care they need. And people helping feral cats in their neighborhoods will have support.
This is what it looks like when a community shows up for animals and the people who love them.
From all of us at Valley Humane Society — thank you for believing in this work, for spreading kindness, and for being part of something truly meaningful.
— Melanie Sadek, president, Valley Humane Society
On TDS
Trump Derangement Syndrome should apply to those who get their info from Fox or Newsmax (both paid millions for lying about the 2020 election), and praise a POTUS who lies, cheats, steals and bullies on the world’s biggest stage.
The Golden Age of Trump means using taxpayer dollars to turn the Oval Office into a tacky and gaudy replica of Trump Tower while destroying the beloved Kennedy Rose Garden, spending $200 million on a White House ballroom, while gutting children’s cancer research, pardoning and releasing violent criminals into society because they are Trump supporters, and even appointing some Jan. 6 insurrectionists to cabinet offices.
It’s supporting a POTUS who lies about brokering peace agreements, tariff “deal” claims with no written agreements, promising and failing to end the war on day 1, and then rolling out the red carpet for a brutal dictator, while treating our allies like dirt.
It is demanding governors gerrymander states while constantly telling the world how great you are doing. It is restricting Black and Brown voters and getting election advice from Putin. It’s saying that grocery and gas prices are lower — they aren’t.
It’s deploying our military into states and lying about them being dangerous — remember his claim that Ohio immigrants were eating the cats and dogs? It’s ignoring that he is not deporting criminals because the highest number of deportation arrests are for people with no criminal record. It’s denying his repulsive relationships with Epstein and Maxwell.
In a nutshell, TDS is ignoring the facts!
– Kerry Pickett
School times should adjust to meet students’ needs
With school starting again, it’s a good moment to think about something that affects us all students and parents.
One time a year ago, I had to stay up really late on a weeknight. The next morning I woke up and I saw the time. It was 7:30 in the morning. If I didn’t get ready and eat breakfast in the next five minutes, I would be late for school given construction at that time on Crow Canyon Road.
School times should start later to meet students’ needs. The three reasons to start later is to improve mental health, preserve the student’s reputation and most importantly decrease tardiness.
Most of the students who go to school in Danville/San Ramon get a limited time of sleep due to very busy schedules and that negatively affects their mental health. This makes their grades worse.
School starting earlier makes students have even less sleep than they should have. Not getting sleep causes mental health issues. In addition to not getting enough sleep, it reduces the amount children learn in a classroom. If schools start earlier, it worsens their mental health.
Make school a less sleepy place for everyone!
— Avi Sogani
Cybersecurity by teens
Cyber for Youth is a teen-founded and -led nonprofit that educates students, parents and elders about cybersecurity habits that are essential to stay safe.
We have seen an incline in an unhealthy use of social media and the internet as more people are gaining access to the digital sea with no education. There have been numerous tragic cases of suicides due to a damaged mental health from online abuse.
Cyber For Youth is dedicated to educating our audience on digital safety through our interactive lessons. In the past year, we have hosted over 10 workshops in the Bay Area and across the USA, we have reached thousands of students, and have talked to parents and elders on how they can be involved with their children and also stay safe online themselves.
Our nonprofit has secured partnerships with other organizations who share the same cause, one being Cyber Secured Africa, a nonprofit located in Ghana that educates the public and local police.
We would love to be featured on the Pleasanton Weekly to publicize how effective and needed our organization is in such a digital and unsafe time. If you would like to know more, please check out our website, cyberforyouth.org.
– Samhita Kandali
Volunteers needed to help seniors
The San Ramon Valley Village, an affiliate of East Bay Villages, is a nonprofit organization forming in our community to help seniors. Over 400 villages have formed across the country over the last 25 years.
Villages provide a vital safety net of compassionate care and connection to seniors enabling them to live in their homes and communities for as long as possible. Valuable services provided by background-checked volunteers include social activities/events, driving (medical, dental and grocery), home repairs and gardening help, tech support, check-in calls/visits, and professional referrals, etc.
The San Ramon Valley Village needs volunteers to perform a few hours of work a week on our Steering Committee to help make the San Ramon Valley Village a reality and start providing services to our members as soon as possible, hopefully Jan. 1.
We need help with publicity, marketing, communications, programming events, membership coordinator, volunteer coordinator, partnership coordinator, administrative support, tech support, fundraising and a treasurer to keep track of our money. You do not need to be an expert at these things with vast experience. Anyone willing to help do things is welcome. Please contact me at elfvingclaes60@gmail.com or 925-984-0537.
When we help ourselves, we find moments of happiness. When we help others, we find lasting fulfillment.
— Claes Elving, chair of the Steering Committee
To those who cry Marxist
In today’s political climate, it has become alarmingly common for certain leaders to weaponize buzzwords like “cancel culture”, “woke” and “Marxist”. These labels are wielded less as honest critiques and more as convenient smears — tools to dismiss legitimate concerns without engaging in reasoned debate.
By tagging their opponents with these words, they not only avoid accountability for their own missteps but also stifle meaningful discussion about issues that matter.
This tactic is not new. We’ve seen it before in the way history has been rewritten to soften the harsh realities of the past.
Following Reconstruction, the former Confederacy actively whitewashed the brutality of slavery, replacing memory with myth. Confederate monuments erected decades after the Civil War were not neutral markers of history, but deliberate symbols meant to glorify an ignominious cause.
To draw a comparison: placing such monuments in public squares is no different than honoring Nazi generals for their “heroism” in defending antisemitism and genocide.
History is indeed something we should remember — but remembrance is not the same as reverence. To memorialize those who fought to preserve slavery is to exalt cruelty and injustice. Just as we should challenge the hollow rhetoric of today’s buzzwords, we must also challenge the ways in which our society has elevated false narratives about our past.
If we are serious about truth, justice and accountability, we must reject both the cheap political labels of the present and the monuments that glorify oppression from the past.
– John Williams
We must protect our forests now and for future generations
Thank you for the opportunity to share my heart’s desire for us as a country to hold true to our love of and commitment to protecting our national forests and national parks. Our current administration is not interested in protecting our national parks or Forests but is interested in allowing big corporations to destroy many of these lands for profit.
As a mother and grandmother who has been blessed to enjoy camping at and visiting almost 40 national parks and forests with our four sons and give grandkids, I encourage all of us to say No to this ongoing destruction of God’s creation and beauty!
Chief Seattle’s speech in 1854 speaks to our own reality 170-plus years later: “He (the white man) treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.
Let’s join together against this devouring appetite: our own consumption and corporations’ devouring mother nature, God’s creation!
— Mary Hicken
Ban rodeo’s brutal ‘steer tailing’ event
Back in 1994, California outlawed the Mexican charreada’s “horse tripping” event; a dozen other states soon followed suit.
Accordingly, the U.S. Charro Federation changed their rules for the entire country. Progress! Hundreds of these events are held throughout California annually.
Charreadas feature an even worse event, “steer tailing” (aka “colas” or “coleaderos”), wherein a mounted charro grabs a running steer by the tail, wraps the tail around his leg, then rides off at an angle, slamming the hapless animal to the ground.
Tails are routinely broken, stripped to the bone (“degloved”), even torn off. Horses may suffer broken legs when steers run the wrong way. “Steer tailing” is not a standard ranching practice anywhere in the U.S.; already banned in Alameda and Contra Costa counties (1993 and 1994), and Nebraska (2008).
Passage of a California ban would likely result in a U.S. Charro Federation rule change banning “steer tailing” nationwide. Even Cesar Chavez was an outspoken critic. All legislators may be written c/o The State Capitol, Sacramento, CA 95814. Email pattern for all: senator.lastname@senate.ca.gov; assemblymember.lastname@assembly.ca.gov.
County ordinances are also in order. Let your representatives hear from you!
— Eric Mills, coordinator, Action for Animals
