California lawmakers make a deal on livable wages and affordable housing in two bills sent to Newsom
LAT, HANNAH WILEY: “Days after they reached a rare deal between affordable housing advocates and labor unions, California lawmakers on Monday approved two significant bills that would guarantee livable wages on projects to convert underutilized commercial buildings into housing.
Senate Bill 6 and Assembly Bill 2011 represent a potentially major shift in the Capitol, where agreements between the state’s powerful labor organizations and advocates for a more robust housing supply are notoriously difficult to negotiate.
Both bills would incentivize and expedite housing construction in commercial corridors traditionally reserved for big-box stores or office buildings close to city services, a way to prevent sprawling development. The legislation now goes to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his consideration.”
READ MORE LIVING WAGE-RELATED NEWS – California Legislature passes bill to protect fast-food workers – LAT, JAIMIE DING/SUHAUNA HUSSAIN
Get ready for Southern California’s hottest and longest heat wave of the year
LAT, ALEXANDRA E. PETRI: “A new week, a new month, a new heat wave — this one the hottest so far this year.
The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat watch for much of Southern California, as temperatures are expected to hit triple digits this week and into Labor Day weekend.
This week’s excessive heat for the region will be the warmest and longest heat wave so far this summer, said David Sweet, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard, adding that record temperatures are possible.”
Stifling hot temperatures prompt excessive heat -watches for S.F. Bay Area and California
The Chronicle, JACK LEE/HANNAH HAGEMANN: “A ridge of high pressure centered over the Four Corners region is expanding west this week and could bring triple-digit temperatures to large swaths of California and the Bay Area.
The National Weather Service Bay Area issued an excessive heat watch on Monday for the entire San Francisco Bay Area and Central Coast. The advisory will go into effect Saturday morning, and extend through Monday evening.
According to San Francisco Chronicle Newsroom Meteorologist Gerry Díaz, the heat will start to build in the Bay Area beginning Wednesday. Some of the hottest temperatures associated with this heat wave are on tap for Thursday and Sunday.”
Kindergarten could soon be mandatory for California children
LAT, MACKENZIE MAYS: “California is one step closer to mandating that children attend kindergarten, a requirement that would come after droves of the state’s youngest students skipped the grade during the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened learning gap concerns.
A bill approved by the state Senate late Monday night is headed to the governor’s desk and, if signed, would require children to complete a year of kindergarten before entering first grade, beginning in the 2024-25 school year.
Like most states, California does not require kindergarten as part of its compulsory education laws. California children who are 5 years old are eligible for kindergarten, but are not required by law to attend school until they are 6 years old.”
Bay Area’s red tide could cause 10,000 fish to wash ashore. The smell is already ‘horrible’
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES: “Thousands of dead fish are piling up around Lake Merritt in Oakland due to a harmful algal bloom impacting the San Francisco Bay, producing a foul smell and raising concerns for residents about the impacts of climate change.
Topsmelt, bass and bat rays were among the dead fish that appeared along the lake’s shoreline over the weekend, according to environmental groups.
“I have not seen this amount of fish dead from the red tide before,” said James Robinson, executive director of the Lake Merritt Institute, an organization that hosts volunteer trash cleanups around the lake.”
Ranchers, tribes, state officials clash over Shasta River water
CALMatters, RACHEL BECKER: “The land that Jim Scala and his family have been ranching for three generations is parched and brown as far as he can see. The pond where his cattle used to drink is now a puddle, ringed with cracked mud.
In other years, water pumped from the Shasta River would have periodically flooded this land, keeping his pasture alive and pond full. But the state had ordered Scala and other ranchers and farmers in rural Siskiyou County to stop irrigating when the drought-plagued river dipped below a certain level.
With bills mounting from trucking in water and buying hay to replace dead pasture, and facing the prospect of selling half his herd, Scala and others made a decision to defy the state’s order.”
California lawmakers just voted to make it easier to add housing. Will Bay Area cities build?
The Chronicle, LAUREN HEPLER: “In a major win for California housing development advocates, state lawmakers signed off Monday on a series of reforms that supporters say could clear the way to build hundreds of thousands of of new homes statewide by significantly easing permitting requirements.
The political wave — under intense pressure from voters who consistently rank unaffordable housing and homelessness as top concerns — comes after months of tense negotiations between labor unions, Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) housing groups, tenant advocates and development opponent-ts that have long fought related measures.
If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the bills would quickly open up large swaths of commercial land for new housing construction, eliminate minimum parking requirements for new homes near transit and make it easier to build backyard in-law units. But like other major housing policy changes in recent years, the prospect of densifying communities where homeowners have long financially benefited from scarcity is also likely to fuel new local political and legal battles in the Bay Area and beyond.”
S.F. Bay’s algae bloom is the largest in over a decade. Here’s why it’s puzzling scientists
The Chronicle, CLAIRE HAO/TARA DUGGAN: “The harmful algae bloom that has now spread from the northern to the southern reaches of San Francisco Bay is the largest in over a decade, causing an unprecedented number of fish to die and residents to question how close they should get to the water.
While scientists can’t yet pinpoint an exact cause of the bloom, which first began in late July, the fish kills are a sign that it has grown in intensity. It’s also become very noticeable, with the bay’s maroon-brown tint visible to motorists from the Bayshore Freeway or Bay Bridge and an estimated thousands of dead fish piling up near shore.
The last major algae bloom in the bay, in 2004, was caused by a heat wave; that is not the case now. However, some say the record-breaking drought could be playing a role, and that more needs to be done to improve the bay’s water quality to prevent such algae blooms, which are expected to increase in intensity statewide with climate change.”
Bay Area officials to build model of Golden Gate Bridge suicide net to practice rescue operations
The Chronicle, ANNIE VAINSHTEIN: “As the anxiously anticipated suicide net project on the Golden Gate Bridge inches toward completion, another development has made headway: training on how to safely extract people from the protective barrier.
The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District approved an $824,000 purchase of a training facility near Mill Valley where first responders will practice recovering the people who make the 20-foot drop into the protective suicide net.
“People that jump off are generally despondent and they’re not always rational,” said Tom Welch, deputy chief of training and operations for the Southern Marin Fire Protection District, one of the main agencies that works on rescues at the bridge.”
Will California become a refuge for transgender health care?
CALMatters, ARIEL GANS: “When Kathie Moehlig’s 11-year-old son decided to transition in 2012, she says not one doctor in San Diego was willing to treat him. “When I called to make appointments, they kept telling me: ‘We don’t treat kids like that here,’” Moehlig said.
But she continued making calls, eventually breaking through at Rady Children’s Hospital. Her efforts drew attention from other families of transgender kids, many of whom began asking her for help.
She decided she “couldn’t just be a family friend,” so eight years ago she started TransFamily Support Services, a nonprofit that offers a multitude of services to hundreds of families of transgender individuals across the country, including support groups, assistance navigating the medical system, and — most recently — political advocacy.”
San Jose Unified discriminated against Christian group that doesn’t let LGBTQ students serve as leaders, court rules
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: “The San Jose Unified School District's refusal to certify the Fellowship of Christian Athletes as an official student organization, because it bars LGBTQ students from serving as leaders, was an act of religious discrimination, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The fellowship is a religious organization whose policies for its members include a “sexual purity statement,” declaring that “the biblical description of marriage is one man and one woman in a lifelong commitment.” The group says its “desire is to encourage individuals to trust in Jesus and turn away from any impure lifestyle.”
The fellowship had chapters of athletes at three San Jose high schools — Pioneer, Willow Glen and Leland — that were recognized as official student organizations from the early 2000s until 2019, when the district implemented its current discrimination policy and withdrew recognition of all three. They could still hold meetings but could no longer keep funds in a school bank account and were no longer listed in the school yearbook.”
LAUSD's hefty school board salaries spared by Senate bill
EdSource, KATE SEQUEIRA: “A Senate bill awaiting the governor’s signature would change California’s education code to align with how Los Angeles Unified pays its school board members, allowing for compensation more than five times the code’s initial cap. LAUSD currently pays $125,000 to school board members who do not have outside employment, in contrast to the $24,000 currently allowed for a district of its size under the education code.
LAUSD currently operates by a Los Angeles City charter rule, which says compensation should be set by a compensation committee comprising stakeholders and community members chosen by officials outside the district, which the bill would make clear is permissible.
The compensation committee’s decisions over salary have put LAUSD board members at a compensation level nearly seven times the amount earned by board members at the second-largest school district in the state. According to 2021 data from Transparent California, school board members at San Diego Unified earn $18,000 — the maximum under the state cap for a district of its size. The district’s average daily attendance is just under 100,000 for the 2020-21 school year, according to EdData.”
Workers want to be in the office five days a week or not at all. What does that mean for S.F.?
The Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO: “When it comes to working remotely, or not, things are starting to stabilize. That is according to research from a group of academics tracking how and where work is done during this phase of the pandemic.
“My take is over the past three or four months we’re very close to what things are going to look like in the long term,” said Jose Maria Barrero, an assistant professor of finance at the private university Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México in Mexico City, who has been conducting the research along with Stanford Professor Nicholas Bloom and Steven J. Davis at the University of Chicago.
Barrero said their research and surveys of workers and companies are showing that workers are, in many cases, spending an amount of time in their workplaces these days that is in line with companies’ long-term plans.”
Californians aren’t living as long as they used to. Here’s why
LAT, MELISSA HERNANDEZ: “The average life expectancy of Californians has dramatically declined in the last year, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Californians are losing, on average, two years of their lives, per the CDC’s latest National Vital Statistics Report, which tracked mortality rates for all 50 states from 2019 to 2020. The report shows that every state and the District of Columbia experienced a drop in life expectancy, with the national average being 77 years — one year shorter than the previous year’s study at 78.
The states with the greatest declines in life expectancies include those in the “Southwest and U.S.-Mexico border area,” including Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey. The data in the study was compiled using final death counts from the National Vital Statistics System, population numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau and state-specific death and population counts from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”
