This week I want to talk a bit about the results of the election in Santa Rosa last week. As you probably know by now, Measure C was rejected. This was the implementation of Rent Control. I was quite surprised that it was rejected and I had seen polls before the voting that said that Measure C was going to pass handily. My guess is that a lot of this could have been turnout based. Older voters (property owners) tend to vote. Younger voters (renters) tend not to vote. I don’t think that Measure C would do much to alleviate our housing crunch here in Sonoma County. I am hopeful that we can get a plan in place to expand housing options soon.
The second thing that I note is that the SMART Train did a “soft launch” on June 7th and they are awaiting approval by the Federal Railroad Administration. Well, they have less than 1 week to meet their last published schedule of a “late Spring” launch. There is a schedule posted with 17 trips a day. The first train leaves Sonoma County Airport at 4:19AM and arrives in San Rafael at 5:26AM. The last train leaves San Rafael at 8:35PM and arrives at Sonoma County Airport at 9:42PM. There are 17 round trips on weekdays and 5 on weekends. So, it looks like things are ready to go for later this year.
While Measure C failed, Measure D passed. The City of Santa Rosa now has a Pot Tax. I think the bigger issue here is that the city is now having a space crunch for warehouse type buildings. 3 of my friends in the Automotive Business have lost their location so that it can be turned into a grow house. I have heard outrageous pricing for space and I expect that this will cause a significant amount of disruption as well. Looking forward, I wonder how these places will be constructed and staffed. I suspect that there will be a great deal of money wasted in all of this and that 3 years from now there will be bargains to be had in space that failed.
Have a great day!
Jim Sackman
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