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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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More Jobs, Population and CalTrain riders
Uploaded: May 17, 2014
Yesterday's jobs report showed that the region added 17,000 in April and 103,000 jobs in the past 12 monthsfor the third year far outpacing the projected 40,000 added jobs per year in Plan Bay Area. These gains lowered unemployment rates on the peninsula to below 5%.
This pace of growth will not continue and the unemployment rate could bounce up before it goes down even more. But job growth will continue probably at rates higher than I anticipated three years ago.
In the first quarter of 2014 VC funding levels hit the highest level since the dot com boom and the Bay Area captured a record high 50% pf the national total.
On April 30th, the state Department of Finance released January 1, 2014 population estimates. Santa Clara County was the fastest growing county in California and for the first time the Bay Area was the state's fastest growing region.
CalTrain released preliminary 2014 ridership counts and there was another surge in ridership in PA and across the system. Overall ridership was up 11.8%, PA counts were up 12.6% and more trains had more than 100% capacity at peak hours.
click here
Palo Alto's Housing Element update process continues amidst these continuing signs of surging regional and county growth. The Comp Plan update is continuing in the same context.
I think the pressures for wanting to live and work in Palo Alto will remain strong. I favor more of the growth in downtown where I live and work and around Cal Ave.
I invite the readers who are worried about the growth going on in south PA to come to these meetings and argue why other areas in the city are better choices for growth. For example the housing advisory committee and related council committee are nearing the end of selecting sites for the HE update and the condo site being discussed elsewhere on TS is in the list I believe.
Of course, people who present have to announce their real name and be respectful.
Local Journalism.
What is it worth to you?
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