Blogs

As Earth Day approached, I was concerned that I was kicking up a huge carbon footprint while I traveled all over the place helping people figure out how to reduce their carbon footprint.

Last Thursday, the often-nerdy Barack Obama erased all remaining doubt that he is positioning himself as America's "Planner In Chief".

The Petaluma City Council voted April 13 night to eliminate the city's planning staff because of a lack of development activity and a $4.5 million budget deficit.

Elimination of a planning department would be a remarkable turn of events anywhere in California, but the fact that this is occurring in Petaluma is downright shocking.

----------UPDATE----------

Read more about the Petaluma situation in this month's Local Watch story.

Our friends over at Planetizen are having too much fun today, which happens to be April 1.

Since our previous blog on the possibility that auto malls – like regional malls – will soon become retail dinosaurs, the California press has glommed onto the idea big time. This is partly, of course, because auto sales are in the news in other ways. A few cities, for example, are offering auto sales tax rebates as part of their "local stimulus package," while other jurisdictions have provided loans to car dealerships.

If you're in a big hurry to build a road project, environmental review can get in the way. As Bill Fulton reports in this month's Insight column, the state budget pact exempted eight Caltrans projects from the California Environmental Quality Act so that they get built quicker. But some folks in Tehama County are saying, "Hey, wait a second"