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Main Street revitalization
I lived in old-town Pleasanton since high school in the ’50s. I built or restored, owned and managed several Main Street and side street commercial properties, and I can tell you that much of today’s Main Street vitality issues can be traced back to 2002 when (unlike Livermore) Pleasanton passed its Downtown Specific Plan (DTSP) without including the one most important rule for building a vibrant pedestrian-friendly environment – a rule requiring “all new” ground floor Main St. businesses must be pedestrian-based.
So (unlike Livermore) low-vitality, automobile-oriented businesses like real estate, title companies, a chain hardware store and another bank moved in ground floor spaces along Main St.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing these businesses; they had every right, they followed the rules. What I am saying is let’s not blame today’s PDA, or today’s city for today’s vitality issues created by long-gone leaders 24 years ago.
By the way, I’m long gone myself. I moved to downtown Livermore to take advantage of its pedestrian-friendly environment, entertainment and expanding vitality. When Livermore wrote their DTSP, they had the wisdom to understand it’s the activity, not the architecture, that defines a downtown and provided the proper rules to do it right.
So if the goal is to revitalize Main St., then I believe Pleasanton should follow Livermore’s lead and judge “all new” Main St. businesses by how pedestrian-friendly they are and what they add to the street, to the pedestrian-environment, to the whole.
There is no other way. Tell the PDA what you think.
– Robert W. Byrd
Keep BART running!
BART’s latest board approval to eliminate the blue line (Castro Valley, West Dublin, Pleasanton) and increase fares is unfair to commuters, taxpayers and the environmentally conscious.
As a daily BART commuter, I find it hard to believe that nearly full morning trains at 4:57 a.m. and full afternoon trains at 3 p.m. can’t cover costs of this service.
With the increasing price of Bay Area homes and commuters traveling as far as from Patterson, Modesto, Stockton to work in SF, it is unfairly treating lower-income workers attempting to save money and hours on their long commute.
There are approximately 100 people waiting for this first train in. Imagine the traffic, expense and pollution caused by adding 100 more cars every 20 minutes at each stop. The Bay Area would be better served to promote the use of public transportation than to cut it.
– Reed Monroe
CodeWithPurpose
What if learning a skill could also change someone’s life, someone you’ve never met, in a neighborhood you’ve never visited? That’s not a dream. That’s what we do, every single day.
Our organization runs free, virtual tech courses built on one fiercely held belief: education should be accessible to everyone. We’ve welcomed 1,800 students, across 110 countries, taught in 20 languages, and together we’ve logged over 8,000 minutes of instruction. Every lesson learned and every skill unlocked is a door opened for someone who needed it.
Ten thousand people engage with our content every month. They come to learn coding, technology, and the skills the modern world demands. And they leave with something more than a certificate. They leave with confidence, with capability, and with proof that opportunity does not have to cost a thing.
Our students rate us 4.6 out of 5, but the number that moves us most is not a rating. It is the message from a student in a country we had never heard from before, telling us that our course changed the direction of their life. That is the moment we work for.
We built this because we refused to accept that quality education had to come with a price tag. Knowledge belongs to everyone. We’d love for your readers to be part of what we are building together.
With gratitude and purpose,
– Shreyan Mitra, co-founder at CodeWithPurpose
PFAS questions need answers
1. What are the vertical and lateral hydraulic conductivities of the aquifer units intersected by the proposed wells?
2. Are the targeted production zones hydraulically connected to the PFAS impact zones through: discontinuous aquitards, fault/fracture zones, paleo channel deposits, high-K lenses?
3. What is the anisotropy ratio (Kh/Kv) in the Bernal subbasin and how does it influence vertical PFAS migration?
4. Have continuous cores been collected to confirm the integrity and thickness of confining layers between the plume and the screened intervals?
5. Has the PFAS plume been mapped in three dimensions?
6. What is the mass distribution of PFAS species, (PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFNA, PFAS, GENX) across the plume?
7. Are there temporary trends indicating plume expansion, contraction, or seasonal oscillation?
8. What is the sorption behavior (Kd, retardation factor) for PFAS in local sediments, especially fine-grained units?
9. Have isoconcentration surfaces been used to model the geometry of plumes and identify potential preferential pathways?
10. Do ground water flow models (MODFLOW, FEFLOW or equivalent) show capture zones intersecting the PFAS plume under any pumping scenario?
11. Has a particle tracking analysis (MODPATH) been run to evaluate advective transport toward the new wells?
There are many more questions.
– Michael Austin
AspireGen
As a junior at Irvington High School in Fremont, one of the most meaningful parts of my journey has been discovering how far teaching can reach. I help lead AspireGen, a student-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on making STEM education more accessible through tutoring and workshops.
What started as a local effort to help students build confidence in computer science grew beyond anything I expected. On Udemy, my Intermediate Python course has reached 8,494 learners and received 283 reviews with a 4.4 rating. Through Schoolhouse.world, I have completed 39 tutoring hours across 35 sessions, supporting 36 learners in 9 countries, with 91 positive ratings and 57 “Super Helpful” marks.
I have always felt like a teacher at heart, and I love sharing what I learn with my peers and with students around the world through Schoolhouse.world and Udemy. It has reminded me that education is not limited by age, geography, or circumstance.
I hope more students feel encouraged to use their skills to uplift others. Small efforts can grow into something much bigger than we imagine.
– Mahi Kumar
More than fair: Pleasanton 'grounds generate $312 million in annual economic impactMarch 12, 2026 4:17 pm
