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By Steve Levy
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved ...
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved downtown in 2006 and enjoy being able to walk to activities. I do not drive and being downtown where I work and close to the CalTrain station and downtown amenities makes my life more independent. I have worked all my life as an economist focusing on the California economy. My work centers around two main activities. The first is helping regional planning agencies such as ABAG understand their long-term growth outlook. I do this for several regional planning agencies in northern, southern and central coast California. My other main activity is studying workforce trends and policy implications both as a professional and as a volunteer member of the NOVA (Silicon Valley) and state workforce boards. The title of the blog is Invest and Innovate and that is what I believe is the imperative for our local area, region, state and nation. That includes investing in people, in infrastructure and in making our communities great places to live and work. I served on the recent Palo Alto Infrastructure Commission. I also believe that our local and state economy benefits from being a welcoming community, which mostly we are a leader in, for people of all religions, sexual preferences and places of birth.
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Santa Clara County 2016 Transportation Ballot Measure
Uploaded: Sep 14, 2015
The San Jose Mercury News reported today on the preliminary wish list of projects for the 2016 county sales tax measure for transportation.
web link
The list includes $50 billion in funding while the sales tax measure is expected to raise $6 billion. Some of the shortfall could be made up by outside funding but there is no doubt that this initial list will need to be substantially reduced.
$30 billion in transit projects were identified including $2 billion to extend BART to San Jose. Road repair projects totaled $9 billion while highway improvements were near $6 billion. Other projects included bike and pedestrian improvements and local expressway projects.
Local projects included a CalTrain crossing project at Charleston, Highway 101 improvements at University, Embarcadero and San Antonio and more express lanes on 101.
Road repairs got favorable mention in the article.
"A huge chunk will almost certainly be set aside to fill potholes. Two years ago in a survey of likely voters, 87 percent rated street repairs a high priority. But last week talks collapsed in Sacramento that would have raised the state gas tax by 12 cents a gallon for road fixes."
There are more details in the article.
Take a look and tell readers what you think of the list and the need for a ballot measure.
Democracy.
What is it worth to you?
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