"California economy now the world’s fourth-largest, overtaking Japan" (Los Angeles Times) reported by Clara Harter

According to the data, California’s nominal GDP reached $4.1 trillion, surpassing Japan’s $4.02 trillion. That places the Golden State behind only the United States at $29.18 trillion, China at $18.74 trillion, and Germany at $4.65 trillion.
[...]
“While we celebrate this success, we recognize that our progress is threatened by the reckless tariff policies of the current federal administration,” he said in a statement. “California’s economy powers the nation, and it must be protected.”

With such a massive economic engine, California can afford — and will further benefit from — infrastructure investments such as:

"Lawsuit blocking Bay Area food bank’s plan to move dismissed" (SF Chronicle) reported by J.K. Dineen

[I]n a ruling, Judge Michael Markman said that the lawsuit was invalid because Hickman and Sheehan had never filed an appeal when the Alameda Planning Commission approved the project. He said that CEQA law doesn’t allow “a judicial action challenging the environmental determination” if the party “fails to exhaust its administrative remedies,” such as an appeal to the Alameda City Council.

[...]

Now that the lawsuit has been dismissed, the food bank “looks forward to refocusing 100% of our energy and resources to serving our community,” said Executive Director Teale Harden.

“As an essential service, we currently serve 10% of the population of the City of  Alameda. Our services, as well as the purchase of the land and costs associated with the construction of our forever home, does not rely on City funding and is made possible entirely through the ongoing support of thousands of donors and hundreds of volunteers who have supported us for more than 48 years,” she said in a statement.

She said the $3 million facility, which will open in late summer or early fall, “is designed to provide food and related services to island neighbors experiencing food insecurity in a dignified and respectful manner consistent with the Food Bank’s mission.”

While this resolves the lawsuit against the Alameda Food Bank, these two litigants still have at least one other active "CEQA" lawsuit against the City of Alameda and Alameda Point businesses.

"FEMA halts grant program that spent billions on disaster protection" (E&E News by Politico) reported by Thomas Frank and "Loss of FEMA program spells disaster for hundreds of communities and their projects" (Associated Press) reported by Jack Brook

The Trump administration is canceling a popular grant program that has given states and communities billions of dollars to protect against natural disasters, according to an internal document obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.

Federal Emergency Management Agency acting Administrator Cameron Hamilton wrote in a memo Thursday that the agency will not allocate the $750 million that was planned this year for Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants. The BRIC program funds local projects that reduce damage from flooding, tornadoes and other weather-related events.

FEMA also will stop funding projects that were previously approved for BRIC grants and are still underway, Hamilton wrote.

In a statement Friday morning, FEMA called BRIC “another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans effected by natural disasters.”

Carrie Speranza, head of the U.S. division of the International Association of Emergency Managers, said Friday on LinkedIn that the cancellation “is devastating.”

The cancellation is the Trump administration’s latest blow to FEMA, which provides tens of billions of dollars a year in disaster aid and grants. The administration has also frozen $10 billion in disaster aid for nonprofits, including hospitals, as it scrutinizes FEMA programs for potentially helping undocumented migrants.

This is bad news for Alameda and Oakland — and the Bay Area as a whole. Alameda, along with neighboring cities and partners, has been on the verge of potentially receiving a $50mm+ grant through this program to prepare Bay Farm and the San Leandro Bay shoreline for rising water levels.

Instead of funding these proactive preparations, the Trump/Musk administration apparently would prefer that the federal government have to cover the larger costs of disasters after they happen.

Democratic officials in states that lost money have publicly expressed outrage. Few Republicans have joined in at a national level, even though about two-thirds of the top 15 states in total FEMA funds received, spending per person and number of federally declared disasters lean heavily Republican.

An exception has been Louisiana's senior U.S. senator, Bill Cassidy. He took to the Senate floor this month calling for BRIC's reinstatement, saying it's “a lifesaver and a cost-saver.”

[...]

“This isn't waste,” Cassidy said. “To do anything other than use that money to fund flood mitigation projects is to thwart the will of Congress."

"Al Gore compares Trump administration to Nazi Germany" (Politico) reported by Debra Kahn

Speaking at an event at the start of San Francisco’s Climate Week, Gore said the Trump administration was “trying to create their own preferred version of reality” to achieve their sweeping objectives similar to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in the 1930s and ‘40s.

“I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement,” Gore said to an audience of roughly 150 climate advocates and policymakers gathered at a science museum on San Francisco’s waterfront. “It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it. But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil.”

"This Top 100 restaurant gives out free meat while you wait in line" (San Francisco Chronicle) by Cesar Hernandez

First of all, the wait is the wait. You have to accept that. Kill time by making an event out of the visit and invite the whole gang. Sensible people bring chairs. Some pre-game with giant boxes of desserts, others with beer or batched cocktails. Everyone has their own strategy for passing the time.

This article also mentions that Fikscue, which has only been open on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, will also be opening for Wednesdays. I've taken it as an unfortunate measure of the Bay Area's unaffordability that even this New York Times-noted pop-up restaurant hasn't been able to make the budget work to expand into a full-service restaurant.

"This Earth Day, a Startup Promises to Recycle the Junk Your Curbside Service Won’t Take" (KQED News) reported by Matthew Green

Whenever I see white Ridwell canisters sitting on front porches around Alameda, I have two thoughts. First, I imagine an episode of Portlandia... The two lead characters are launching a new business venture. They're going to help the citizens of Portland to recycle their film plastic and plastic clamshells and other oddly specific waste that would pain those citizens of Portland to place into their conventional trash bins. After much labor, the frumpy and laugh-less characters have collected and piled up all of the detritus, don't know what to do with it, and instead hire an even more dubious set of local entrepreneurs to perform a "upcycling ceremony." It turns out the ceremony is just trucking the waste and — out of sight of the original customers — dumping it in a dump.

It turns out my sarcastic vision is not accurate. Ridwell started not in Portland but rather in Seattle:

Ridwell now has more than 110,000 members in the eight metropolitan areas it operates in — including Seattle, Atlanta, Austin, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Denver and Portland. The Bay Area has quickly become one of its fastest-growing markets. Since launching here in 2022 — starting first in the city of Alameda — nearly 15,000 households have signed up, and more than 1.5 million pounds of waste have so far been diverted from local landfills, the company said.

[...]

This service “is for busy people who want to feel better about where their stuff goes,” said Gerrine Pan, Ridwell’s vice president of partnerships, who calls herself a “serial entrepreneur-turned-climate enthusiast.”

Pan is a matchmaker of sorts. It’s her job to find homes for the multitude of disparate junk that arrives every day at Ridwell’s regional warehouse in San Leandro.

“Everything is trucked here. We’re probably on the brink of needing to find another facility or looking for more space,” Pan said, gesturing toward barrels of old batteries, a giant crate of plastic foam blocks, and a 15-foot-tall hill of bags, each packed with plastic film.

The second thought that I have when seeing the Ridwell pails on front porches: Ideally these Ridwell customers will be ready to write and call into Alameda City Council when the city's solid-waste concession goes out to re-bid. Rather than having this type of recycling be a premium add-on, what if the city asked our primary service provider to make more of this recycling and reuse part of our once-a-week service?

Doing so does require better understanding which of these forms of recycling/reuse can be done at a sustainable price-point — and which are just wishful thinking that's only possible with venture capital and/or a lack of accountability.

The city's Solid Waste, Recycling and Organics Collection Franchise Agreement was approved in 2021 and lasts for 12 years (with Alameda County Industries). Hopefully that will be more than enough time to sort out a more financially sustainable business model for expanded material recycling and reuse services. Ridwell customers: Put sticky note on your calendars for ~2032 as a reminder to ask Alameda City Council to expand the city's solid waste recycling and reuse services. And in the meantime, good luck to the staff of Ridwell finding ways to re-home all those materials they're collecting in that San Leandro warehouse...

"Abundance meets resistance: Are Democrats finally ready to go all in on building housing?" (Cal Matters) reported by Jeanne Kuang

Still, YIMBY-ism hit a stumbling block Tuesday in the form of the Senate housing committee. The committee, led by Sen. Aisha Wahab, nearly killed a closely watched bill to require cities to allow taller, denser apartments and condo construction near public transit stations. 

Wahab said she was acting on a chorus of familiar objections from progressives and others who have long delayed housing construction in California: The legislation didn’t guarantee that projects would be built with union labor. It didn’t require that the new units be affordable for low-income residents. It could infringe on local governments’ ability to block or green-light projects. It opened up the possibility of bypassing certain environmental reviews. 

In the end, the committee voted 6-2 against Wahab’s objections to narrowly advance Senate Bill 79, by Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and prominent advocate for housing production.

Our new state senator, Jesse Arreguín, is also on the Senate Housing Committee. He voted in favor of advancing SB 79 (née SB 827, née SB 50, née SB 50).

"A Disillusioned Urban Planning Glossary" (McSweeney's Internet Tendency) by Emilie K. Adin

Cul-de-Sac – Latin for “your kids can skateboard here, but good luck getting a bus.”