CITY MANAGER’S UPDATE
Brian Dossey, City Manager
Happy Holidays! As you know, the Holiday Season brings several special events to this great community. Please see the calendar on pages 2 and 3 of LiveWire for the dates and times for each event. For more information please call the Colma Community Center at 650.985.5678 or visit our website at www.colma.ca.gov.
The Town Hall project is nearly complete, and we have scheduled a ribbon cutting and dedication for Tuesday, December 4th at 4:00 pm at Town Hall. Please join us for this historic event as we will be celebrating the re-opening of Town Hall. Appetizers and beverages will be served shortly after the ribbon cutting and dedication. For more information please visit our events page at www.colma.ca.gov/events/. The reorganization of the City Council has also been scheduled for December 4th at 6:30 pm at Town Hall. The meeting is open to the public and residents are encouraged to attend this annual event as the Council selects the new Mayor and Vice Mayor. Cake and coffee will be served. We hope to see you there!
The Town has commissioned a commercial that will air on Comcast throughout the Holiday Season. You can see the commercial on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YgVZENYsqWY
Lastly, the Town has just recently completed its first series of our Disaster Preparedness Workshops – Community Action Program for Emergencies (C.A.P.E.), training approximately fifteen residents to not only be prepared in a natural disaster but to also assist the community in a large-scale event. I would like to thank the men and women who committed four evenings to the program and am excited for their continued interest in additional training in early 2019. Its not to late to join C.A.P.E and become a superhero for our community. Please watch for details on additional Disaster Preparedness programming in late January/February 2019.
ELECTION SEASON 2018
Christopher J. Diaz, City Attorney and Samantha Chen, Deputy City Attorney
Did you vote in the recent elections? Do you know the results of the ballot measures? This year’s November ballot measures reflected voter frustrations over increasing poverty in California, the housing crisis, and homeless people on our streets. See below for a summary and results of measures impacting the Town and its residents.
Prop 1 and 2: The absence of funding for affordable housing has contributed to California’s current affordable housing and homelessness crisis. Voters signaled their support for subsidizing building affordable units for the low-income and homeless by approving Prop 1, a $4 billion affordable housing bond assisting low-income households, agricultural workers, and veterans, and Prop 2, authorizing $2 billion in bonds to construct housing for homeless individuals in need of mental health services.
Prop 3: Voters rejected a proposed $8.877 billion general obligation bond to improve water infrastructure.
Prop 5: Passage of this measure would have provided up to $2 billion in annual property tax breaks to seniors to incentivize them to sell and free up their homes for younger families to buy. Voters denied giving this tax break.
Prop 6: Transportation is a core issue for cities. Prop 6 was placed on the ballot to repeal SB 1, a massive 2017 transportation funding package focused on maintaining existing transportation networks like the state highway system, transit and local streets, roads and bridges. More than 6,500 local and state transportation safety and improvement projects were already underway by SB 1’s first year. Prop 6 would have eliminated these projects and billions in dedicated transportation funding. Voters rejected this measure to ensure funding continues for transportation infrastructure.
Prop 10: Voters denied an initiative which would have restored authority to local governments to enact rent control after the Legislature blocked cities and counties from doing so with the 1996 Costa-Hawkins Act.
Overall, it was a very busy election year for many key issues!