Supervisor Candace Anderson, Leading Change in the East Bay
- jared2766
- Aug 20
- 28 min read
Insights from Supervisor Anderson on Local Governance and Economic Development**
Introduction
In a recent episode of the Capstone Conversation Podcast, host Jared Asch sat down with Supervisor Candace Anderson, the chair of the Contra Costa County Supervisors for 2025. With decades of experience in local government and a strong commitment to public service, Anderson shared her perspectives on a range of issues impacting Contra Costa County, from economic development and mental health services to fire safety and regional collaboration.
A Career in Public Service
Candace Anderson's journey in public service began over two decades ago. With a background in law, Anderson transitioned from a prosecuting attorney in Honolulu to serving as an elected official in Contra Costa County. Having raised six children, she believes that her parenting skills have equipped her with unique insights into moderating arguments and understanding the needs of her constituents. Her long-standing commitment to community service forms the backbone of her leadership style.
Local Governance and Community Engagement
Anderson represents a diverse district within the East Bay, including several well-educated and civically engaged communities. She emphasizes the importance of not only addressing the needs of her district but also tackling broader socioeconomic challenges across the county. Her goal is to uplift the entire community by providing access to essential services like food, shelter, and education.
For the full podcast episode www.capstonegov.com/podcast or "Capstone Conversation" on your favorite podcast app.
Economic Development Initiatives
As the current chair of the East Bay Economic Development Alliance (East Bay EDA), Anderson is keenly focused on bringing manufacturing and technological advancements to the region. The challenge lies in overcoming obstacles such as power shortages and stringent air quality regulations. Anderson advocates for a collaborative approach between counties and emphasizes the importance of simplifying bureaucratic processes to attract businesses and drive economic growth.
Addressing Mental Health and Transportation Issues
Mental health services are a top priority for Anderson. She is actively involved in initiatives aimed at breaking cycles of repeat offenses and homelessness through preventive services and supportive housing. Additionally, Anderson is committed to improving transportation infrastructure, advocating for smart ramp metering and active transportation options to alleviate traffic congestion.
Fire Safety and Housing Concerns
Given the high fire risk in parts of her district, Anderson highlights the importance of preventative measures and community preparedness. She encourages the use of fire-resistant materials in new housing developments and emphasizes the need for educational campaigns about evacuation plans and personal preparedness.
Conclusion
Supervisor Candace Anderson continues to champion a vision for Contra Costa County that is based on collaboration, common sense, and a deep commitment to community welfare. Her leadership is impacting a range of areas, from economic development and mental health to transportation and fire safety. As she navigates these challenges, Anderson's approach remains grounded in the belief that meaningful progress comes from working together to address the needs of the entire community.
Hashtags:
7. #FireSafety
10. #EastBay
11. #EconomicGrowth
13. #PublicPolicy
15. #Infrastructure
16. #PublicSafety
17. #YouthEngagement
18. #EastBayEDA
19. #LocalLeadership
For a full Transcript see below:
Welcome to the Capstone conversation where you learn about what's happening in the Greater East Bay. I am your host, Jared Asch.
today I am joined by supervisor Candace Anderson, who is the current chair of the Contra Costa County, supervisors for 2025 and a long time activist here in Contra Costa County. Thank you for joining me today.
Oh, my pleasure. Happy to be here.
Tell us, for those of people who are listening who don't know a lot about you and your history in the community tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Okay. I have been in global government a cumulative. Of 23 years that I been on the counter cost accounting Board of Supervisors for 13 years.
Prior to that, I was on Danville's Town Council for just under 10 years, and in the nineties I did a brief stint on Morgan Hills. City Council. I am an attorney professionally. I met my husband in law school and pretty much put my law career on hold as I stayed home to raise our six children and serve in local government.
And all of my six kids are married. I have 12 grandchildren. 13th on the way. And have lived in Danville since 1995, and I grew up in Hawaii, which is actually where my first legal job, I started out as a prosecuting attorney for the city and county of Honolulu, arguing cases before the Hawaii Supreme Court and absolutely love law, and order and justice and good legislative practices.
If we get through our policy conversation later, she's gonna give advice on how she managed six kids, because I have enough trouble with three and
no it comes in handy if you have a cantankerous board of supervisors. Some of those parenting skills of teenage sons for four of my children, were boys.
It comes in handy,
right? How to moderate, an argument between two people.
You do that how to. Figure out what are they really asking for? What do they need? Now? Parenting skills give you a fabulous foundation for serving in local government.
They do. It's, it teaches patients and listening in a lot of ways, so it is a good attribute.
Tell us about your district and what makes it unique versus every other part in the East Bay.
I really have an amazing district, I represent the communities of Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda, part of Walnut Creek, Alamo, Danville, San Ramon, Diablo, Blackhawk, and additional unincorporated communities like Park, Mead, Saranap, and Canyon.
So what I have is one, a really beautiful district. All of the cities in my area have done a really good job of maintaining open space. Hillside ordinances really have protected it. Great partnerships with East Bay Regional Park District. Open space, much like much of the rest of the East Bay, that's one of our greatest attributes is our open space, our parks, our ability to have recreation, high quality of life.
With my six major cities that are part of my district, it's a very well educated population, so I have it engaged constituents, and they don't hesitate to let me know what they think about issues. They vote. I've got the highest voter turnout of any other part of Contra Costa County among our 19 cities in Contra Costa County.
I probably have the highest educational level, and I've got a really interesting diverse community. People might. Had this perception of, oh, the Wain San Ramon Valley is a, group of just wealthy people, not making a difference in their community, but they are. And we have a really wonderful mix of different cultures, particularly in San Ramon, where over a third of their population now, and it comes from Asia and many first generation from, whether it be China, Korea.
India, Pakistan, we have a really fun cultural mix of individuals and it's wonderful to just really celebrate the diversity of our communities.
When you're working with your colleagues in the Board of Supervisor and you represent an area that is a higher voter turnout, higher levels of education. How does that impact how you look at things versus how some of your colleagues may who represent different types of areas?
It, for me, it's really important to recognize that while on planning land use issues, I'm representing the geographic areas. The complexity of the issues we as a county face when we're looking at socioeconomic issues, when we're looking at providing the safety net services. I'm there to represent the whole county, and I recognize that my needs are gonna be very different than in Richmond and San Pablo, in Pittsburgh and Antioch.
And my goal is to really break cycles of poverty, to help create safe environments for everybody to ensure people have. Access to food, to shelter, to education, and how do we lift up the entire community and not just focus on one district that I represent and absolutely when it comes to land use issues, each of us really takes a serious effort to make sure that what we're doing in our districts that's important.
But when it comes to things like our county hospital. Our county mental health services, our criminal justice system, we're there representing the entire county, not just a certain segment of the county.
I think that's important. I've seen as a lot of cities particularly have moved to districts. They're very, the elected officials tend to.
Look at priorities in their district only, and it's hey, you still need to get to a majority, so you gotta learn to work with others. A lot of respect for how you, you take that approach. Your district is unique, probably one of two Contra Costa districts that work very closely with Alameda, particularly in the Tri-Valley area where you attend a lot of events.
Down there. Can you talk about that uniqueness and what is the benefit to Contra Costa in you building relationships there?
Oh, absolutely. And most residents in Contra Costa, they may not even know they live in Contra Costa County, and when we drive from Sanon into Dublin, they're not thinking, who do, I just left Contra Costa.
Now I'm in Alameda County. People don't really identify with their counties as much as they do with their cities, and it's critical that we have. These relationships and so particularly with Alameda County, Tri-Valley area, even when I was on Danville's Town Council, we were working together on legislative matters because 680 turns into Alameda County very quickly.
580 goes into Contra Costa it, or takes you right into Contra Costa. When we were doing federal advocacy, we were doing it as a region. We do have actually some regional boards such as the Tri-Valley Transportation Council. That just is made up of the cities of Livermore, of Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Danville, and the county all the way up through Alamo.
And we have a developer impact fee that goes into the Tri-Valley Transportation Council Fund, and we use it on regional. Improvements that are gonna offset the impacts of development because we are a region. We work, I sit on county connection Avta, which is the bus system in the Livermore Amador Valley area.
We work together with them on a one seat ride to help with our dis disabled transportation system to get people to doctor's appointments, things like that. We work with them on the East Bay Regional Communication System, which is the radio system. Our first responders use. We work with them from an economic development standpoint.
I chair East Bay EDA, so that's one area where we want the whole region thriving both sides of the hill for Alameda County, not just the Tri-Valley area, but also the Oakland, Hayward Fremont areas as well. But we have Visit Tri-Valley, which goes again, all the way into Alamo to really look at, have people look at this as a destination to travel to and to enjoy the wineries.
The assets that are in the Livermore Valley, as well as go up to Eugene O'Neill's Dow House in downtown Danville. Go out to Las Tropic, enjoy the parks, the beautiful downtown Alamo as well. It's really very much a collaborative practice that we have among each other. I work with David Hobert, the county supervisor, Nate Miley my counterparts from Alameda County who represent the Tri-Valley area.
And I see us as really benefiting together. If they bring a business in, great for them. Many times they'll be living in Contra Costa. And vice versa. It's very much an important relationship, and we're not so regional that we don't understand the need for that.
I think that's important because like you said some people don't necessarily associate themselves with their county, but they do the region.
The six 80 corridor and where people live and work is a tied unit. You're chairing of the. Economic, the East Bay EDA, the Economic Development Alliance. It's the first time somebody from Contra Costa has chaired that organization. You took over just I think earlier this year, end of last year.
Talk about that switch and how that helps the residents in Contra Costa.
In the East Bay EDA I joined it probably about 10 years ago. Before that my, my colleague, Mary Pfo had been on it, but Keith Carson, who is a recently retired Alameda County supervisor. He did an amazing job leading it, and he wanted to continue in that role and none of us minded.
East Bay EDA is housed in the Alameda County administration building. It is under the direction of Susan Marsi who helps them. Set some of the parameters of their work, but we, the East Bay EDA board also are really trying to work on the direction. And so for the past couple of years we've wanted to make sure that East Bay EDA while it's.
Funded more by Alameda County than Contra Costa County. How do we expand the role into Contra Costa County? How do we really ensure that we have cities who are taking advantage of some of the wonderful economic analysis that is provided, the resources that East Bay EDA can provide to really compliment what they're doing?
And so some of it is by. Having more events. Some of it's by highlighting more businesses. When we do things like our innovation awards, can we highlight some more of our Contra Costa businesses? It's a tremendous asset for advocacy for the region for helping businesses that wanna relocate to the region because we do have, but on both Alameda and Contra Costa, something so unique for the Bay Area.
When you've got the labs, you've got the Sandy National Lab, the Lawrence Livermore Lab, where you've got an incredible. Talented group of individuals who either still working for either lab or they're retired and maybe starting up their own companies. You've got a workforce. We've got community colleges that are ready to train workers to be even more specific to an industry's need, but housing's a little bit affordable.
Now. Most people don't think of any housing in the Bay Area as being affordable, but Contra Costa. Little bit more affordable parts of Alameda also. And then you've got these assets, like we've talked about, of the open space. Excellent schools, K through 12 schools, recreation, regional programs.
Safety, you look at San Ramon Danville, both have been ranked some of the safest, most desirable communities to live in. When you are an employer. Looking for where to land. If you can find a place where you've got housing that's a little bit more affordable, excellent schools, you're going to be able to draw employees.
And we've got a regional network, in the East Bay, you've got, of course, the Port of Oakland with our shipping with Oakland Airport, my favorite airport to fly in and out of. But on the Contra Costa side, you've got Buchanan Airport, a smaller. Commuter airport and where we are both there and out in Byron.
We're doing some ai work with tech companies, drone testing, other opportunities for technology that you can't necessarily access at just every airport. Similarly, Livermore. Airport has some of that ability as well. To me it's a tremendous opportunity for the East Bay to have an organization like East Bay EDA that's really focusing on both Alameda Contra Costa and the different assets, nuances we both bring.
One of the priorities of the East Bay EDA is to bring in manufacturing Absolutely. To the region. Particularly parts of Contra Costa. There's some difficulties with that and often talked about is lack of power and the air quality boards regulations, along with some state problems.
Not expecting you to solve that today, but talk a little bit about the strategy. Behind this and how, where do you think we could be successful in attracting more manufacturers?
We need more common sense. And again, I think that the area you're talking about is what we often call the northern waterfront that really can stretch, all the way down from Richmond or even further south, all the way, up through Antioch where you have.
These manufacturing sites that were used for years and years for having manufacturing. But they have trucking, they have rail, they have ports, they have some of the best access where if you're doing a cleaner, advanced manufacturing, these are ideal sites. Electricity, Sarah Yoell sits on our, who works with pg e.
She sits on our board of East Bay, EDA. I know this is something she's concerned about. I've heard pg ECEO talk about it. But absolutely we need to continue to work with all of our providers of utilities, of water, sewer, et cetera, to figure out how can we guarantee that we can get a site power as quickly as we can, and the other utility hookups to make it an easier transition.
Air quality board, I. I have two colleagues who sit on it. It frustrates me when I hear that we are coming up with. New reuse projects, things that will create cleaner opportunities, and we still hit roadblocks. And that's where the common sense just is not meeting. It doesn't make any sense, and it really has become an impediment for us to really move forward with some very important projects.
But the assets that we have. A long Contra Costa shoreline are unparalleled. You just don't find this ability to pull some level of water transportation right there. Rail, transportation, trucking, transportation. These are unique, amazing sites. As you head into East County, that's some of our most affordable housing.
In Contra Costa County. And so if we can bring good paying jobs to where we already have housing, and I also sit on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and formally I sat on abag where we have priority production areas where we're saying, yes, let's make these priorities. This is where we want to produce things, where we've already got the workforce ready to go.
That makes sense. As chair of that organization, what would you say your goal is in four or five years for that? What kind of economic development do you see happening? And you would consider, Hey, my time here was successful kind of thing.
To me, it's bringing a mix of new technology, of org of businesses.
Ai, when you've got two airports right there to be able to test out some of their technology you need a mix part of it's highlighting it's availability, it's then simplifying the land use process, and that's what we're talking about, but it's also in the county, it's off also on the cities that might control sites of making it.
A simpler process where someone comes in and someone walks them through, here's how we can get this done for you. I'm seeing in Contra Costa, we do have a new economic development manager, Allison Greenlee. She's been sharing with me some great stories of people coming in and saying, Hey, this is the business we have.
This is where we'd really like to go. And she and colleagues in our Department of Conservation Development being able to say. Why don't you look at this site, and this site. These are already entitled. These already have these permits. These land use stipulations here would work with what you're trying to accomplish.
And so it's actively providing that concierge service, as I sometimes call it to someone. To come in and we're gonna help it happen. We're competing though with Nevada, just across the border and you hear these stories of people walking up to the counter in Nevada and them saying, okay, here's your permit.
We want you to start building tomorrow. Qua doesn't really allow that in California, so you know, will the governor come up with CQA reforms? We're doing it for housing. Maybe we've done it for stadiums in the past. Can we do it more for businesses? To simplify it. And even this morning I was meeting with our director of conservation development talking about the challenges of a restaurant wanting to open an outdoor patio dining.
How long does it really take to just go through the approval process for something like that? And as we talked, I just thought. We've gotta make it easier on businesses. We want to have economic development thriving, and if we can take out impediments where you don't need them, let's do it. Yes, you've gotta have health and safety.
You've gotta protect, you've gotta have fire weighing in on all of those things. You've gotta make sure we're doing everything safely, but do we have to do it so slow? Are there workarounds? That's my goal to, to break through some of those things.
It's been said publicly, but like Walnut Creek is redoing their general plan and they estimate that it'll take four years.
And then somebody pointed out that it took three and a half years for the Allies to win World War ii, and what did happen in 4.5 years was they built the GoldenGate Bridge in the 1930's.. Government is. Definitely not so good at fast tracking here. And places that are, like Fremont and Vacaville that are setting 30 and 90 day timetables on things are doing fairly well at attracting the businesses compared.
And
There's the phrase, time is money. And absolutely that's the case I think through. Our processes. It's not that we're trying to delay we're trying to allow for public input to ensure that we're being fair and all of those things, but it does result in businesses needing to go where they can open their doors as quickly as possible with the support of the community.
And I'm watching San Ramon, one of the cities within my district, and particularly as they're looking at building more housing, and they've been able to, move things along pretty quickly. Even though they have their layers necessary layers of review, but particularly as Bishop Branch Sunset development has been going from office spaces to residential, things are getting built pretty quickly.
You need to have that cooperative city county saying, this is what we want, we're gonna make it happen.
I think it's, some of it's cultural. And in the process and how everybody wanna works towards a goal what are some other big initiatives? That are important to you in the next year or two coming up at the county
for me mental health services has always been a critical one, particularly those who continue to cycle in through our jails. They commit small crimes, they get released. They commit crimes again through our homeless shelters. We've been doing a lot of different things in this. I started out with a national group called the Stepping Up Initiative through the National Associations of Counties.
And so right before the pandemic, we started doing an assessment in all county departments of. When are we interacting with these frequently arrested, frequently homeless individuals? And what can we start doing before they get to that point? How do we do some more preventive services? After the pandemic or during the pandemic?
Actually, we. Focused on alternatives to policing a mental health crisis through our A three program, which continues to grow. And through that, again, you're being able to intervene with people who are demonstrating a mental health crisis, not just by arresting them, but by potentially getting them peer support, a sobering center, an alternative to law enforcement to deal with whatever.
Are going through, and so our health department has been doing additional study looking at. Our incarcerated population and seeing is there a category of individuals that continue to show up and have more arrests, more hospitalizations for psych emergency especially, and how do we really provide supportive housing the structure for those individuals?
So that's something that has always been very important to me. Even before a three, we did something called Laura's Law, which was an assisted outpatient treatment. Because a woman came to me and said, we need Laura's law in our county. I said what's Laura's law? This was when I'd been in office just a few weeks.
And she said my, my hu my son who was 38 and my father in his eighties were bludgeoned to death in the Central Valley by their neighbor. Who had serious mental illness and he was committed crimes was let go because he was incompetence to stand trial, but there was nothing anyone could do.
And so that's a population that to me has been really important that we figure out as we spend more money on. Mental health within our jails that we figure out how to help them upon release. So that's one area. So mental health services is a big one for me. Transportation, I don't like being stuck in traffic.
I listen to a lot of great audio books. I'm well read because I'm stuck in traffic. I hate it. I'm fortunate enough to chair the Innovate six 80 committee where we have really focused on, how do we get people to. Either be on transit or if they're in their car. How do we use smart technology?
We're moving forward with some smart ramp metering that's going to enable to have the ramps all connected to the freeway system so that we can ensure that we're moving our freeways just a little bit faster, a little bit better. Active transportation, getting people on bicycles. We're doing a lot to create our shared roadways.
That's really important. Another thing I've been focusing on for quite a few years is really adding a, what I'm calling a bicycle expressway, but a bifurcated. Trail on the Iron Horse Trail because people do want to use it. We're having some conflicts right now with e-bikes that are going a little too fast and chasing off the people who are walking their dogs, or the kid on the tricycle or the women on a walk.
We have I did fund a pilot. I. From Bollinger Canyon Road where the overpass is just about to be. We'll have a groundbreaking in a couple of weeks there. City of San Ramon built the overpass on the Iron Horse Trail, and it would go from there to Crow Canyon. And so it's in the design phase and essentially would add, you'd have the old Iron Horse Trail, which would be the pedestrians, slower moving people, and then you would have another lane that would be with a dotted line for people going north and south on the Iron Horse Trail, who want to use it for active.
Transportation and when the there, there's interesting history for anyone who's interested about the Iron Horse Trail. The county owns the Iron Horse Trail and we bought it from Southern Pacific when Southern Pacific stopped running trains in the seventies. The grants we bought it with. Required the county to maintain the center of the trail so that someday we could put down a light rail, we could put down a bus away, some sort of mass transit.
And as you might imagine, over the years, people began to really value the Iron Horse Trail, not as a future transit quarter, but is a recreational quarter, a place to enjoy. And I remember when I joined Dans Town Council, the. Outgoing council member who actually had been put to the board of supervisors was giving me this history.
And I said, so you mean we could, run BART down there someday? And she looked at me and said, oh, we're by dead body. That happened. And that's the mentality of a lot of elected officials. They didn't wanna give up the Iron Horse trail. And then as active transportation as we were trying to get away from greenhouse gas emissions came along.
We worked with the state and ultimately Senator Grayson carried legislation that would take the county out from under the requirement that we maintain it to be a transit corridor, but we could start developing uses to be an active transportation corridor. That's something that's gonna be really important to me.
Housing in the right places is really important. We need housing of all types and also our community warning system is something I've been working on and I'm very excited to see where we can take that to really get more people signed up for the county's community warning system. They'll be notified by email or text.
An emergency and to get to know their evacuation zones and that you can do on the community warning system because in the old days, unless you were leading up in the hills, you didn't worry about a wildfire. All of us need to be aware and all of us need to be prepared to evacuate and know our evacuation zone, go to the community warning system in an emergency so that we can be brought up to date of what's happening and receive those alerts.
There's, a lot of areas you're focused on I'll try to touch on a couple of them. Your area has, your district has a large fire risk, particularly in the Orinda, Moraga Hills, and as those Moraga hills go towards San Ramon where there's a lack of. Exits, ways that people can get trapped in a community or bottlenecked.
What is the county, I know there's measure X funds used for increased fire. I know they have their own fire department though over there. How is the county working on balancing that and the increased need for housing in all of those communities as well?
You'd really wanna discourage and we do discourage with our new general plan that we did.
We did finish this last year. We approved it in high fire danger areas. You could have single family homes, but you can't do major subdivisions. There's a lot you can do to encourage. The materials that you use to build homes so that they're more fire resistant if they are in any of those areas.
Measure X dollars. We've been doing a lot with prevention and I've gotta say MOFD, Moraga and Fire really led the charge with helping. Come up with, apply for grants from the state to really reduce some of the wild land fire issues. And so we, through Measure X, have also, we have what are called hand crews that year round are out there clearing bush debris up in the Lafayette Hills, up near Rossmore, and then MOFD and Moraga Orinda area as well to really focus on that.
And then it's. The accountability, helping neighbors work together. There is something called Firewise communities, and so we encourage people to engage with their neighbors. There are small grants that would help bring in a chipper help people remove landscaping to close to their houses, creating defensible spaces replacing roof shake roofs.
With ceramic roofs that are less likely to catch on fire there. There's a lot that we're able to do with technology. Evacuation routes are important, and I've gotta applaud the wain community because they have done some great drills where they can practice even doing what we call a contraflow, where if there was a true disaster, the police would stop people from driving up and you would have two lanes, for example, if you're coming out of Moraga where they're coming down.
Through Orinda coming down through the Central Lafayette or coming out by St. Mary's in the southern end of Lafayette into Walnut Creek, where you could create those contraflow lanes to get people out. There, obviously is the little, the back road through Canyon as well that would take you into Oakland, but it's really helping people.
Know what their evacuation routes are, know what their zones are, and a lot of education about not waiting until you get an evacuation order to evacuate. If you're in high fire danger season, we know there's a big high wind event. You hear of a fire in the vicinity. Leave, then go visit your grandchildren.
Go visit your friend on the coast. Don't wait until you're stuck in a line of cars because we really cannot engineer our roads to be such. I know. Moraga is doing a really great job looking at some grants that might turn trails into an evacuation route in an emergency. I think that's terrific. If we wanna have all of those options, but it is being prepared.
Having one of the best pieces of advice given to me is besides having your seven two hour kit, have a list of, the 20 things, if you had 10 minutes to evacuate. You would go and get, because in a disaster, when we get that information, our adrenaline's running, we might not be thinking as clearly as we want to.
We might, grab our favorite dress or, something ridiculous where you really need, I need these important documents. Maybe I need this family heirloom, this jewelry, I need this medication. You have a checklist so you can evacuate. You just need to, we all need to be a little bit more prepared.
That makes sense. And we just had the Livermore Pleasanton fire chief on the podcast talking about just fire safety and basic skills. And I like how you talked about sitting in traffic as one of your favorite hobbies although you didn't plug listening to the Capstone conversation podcast.
No. And
you should be. That's what all you should be listening to.
Come
a list away. It just Capstone. Yeah.
Yeah. I I've been sitting on, I've chaired the CCTA citizen advisory committee for a couple of terms and sit on the Walnut Creek Transportation Committee, and my wife still wonders why I can't help speed up the lights on Ignacio Valley Road.
Yeah to sink better. And it's more complicated because it has to do with other cities and other traffic flows than just Ignacio Valley Road. But I want to hit on the six 80 innovation because I was with Tim Hale. Twice on I. On Friday, Tim Hill, who chairs CCTA, and he talked about active management of the highways and how Caltrans, yes, they come and repair things, but they are not actively managing the highways.
And he's talking about how six 80 and four in particular, if they actively manage it, he believes that they could get 20 plus percent more efficiency. So if you're talking a four lane highway, you are talking about adding a fifth lane. Through the use of technology and actively doing that. And that is so important.
And I know that's some of the work you're doing on Tri Valley.
Yeah. And it's the, a lot of the metering ramps, these smart meter metering ramps that are all talking to one another and what's happening in San Ramon is potentially affecting what's happening when you have the Highway 4 6 80 bge, it's a technology.
It will allow you to coordinate it and as a result, you're also coordinating some of the city streets. I will say most cities biggest fear is if you have ramp metering, that they're gonna have traffic backed up on their streets. But there are ways through having our connected. Transportation management systems in place.
If you start seeing it getting backed up in Danville, then you might speed up Alamo and have, you know them or stop Alamo a little bit longer so that Danville can get that backlog moving forward. Incident, part of this whole thing is also incident management, and Tim and I went down to Houston with another group of people from MTC and CCTA to look at how.
They handle issues on the freeways in Houston and where they have. Second, an accident happens. They have a truck there. Within about three minutes they have this NASA like control room where they're watching in Houston every single stretch of freeway. The second they see a car spin out or have a problem, they dispatch a truck that is a privately owned truck that contracts with the city of Houston and with their public works department and their equivalent of highway patrol.
To get accidents off because one of the biggest problems we have that create traffic is having an accident on site. And in Houston it's get that car off the freeway, whatever you need to do, you get it off and then you get the help. Obviously if there's any medical emergency, you take care of that, but you really could do that.
We're looking at. Potentially bus on shoulder, which is working really well in San Diego. And if we can convince people, if you can get down from Walnut Creek Bart to San Ramon to your job center, 20 minutes faster because you're gonna be in the express bus that can even use the express lane rather being stuck in traffic.
That's a real plus and we wanna get more people liking transit.
That also goes back to your, the regional conversation with the Tri-Valley, right? You, we could do all these things in Contra Costa, but if our friends on your regional transit boards down there don't also align their goals.
People get stuck getting at a corner. Yeah, that imaginary line.
You need that collaboration. And fortunately we see a lot of that and whether it be through the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and while we both have different transportation authorities, we have a lot of coordination also through Caltrans on the six 80 corridor, the five 80 corridor and 80 down in the Alameda.
West side of Contra Costa County. Lot going on. Yeah.
What bef before we head out, what haven't I asked that you want to touch or what do you want to dive in a little deeper?
Oh, I could talk all day. I think we're a really interesting time in our country right now and I. Right now I've got a really good balanced county budget, about $7 billion plus or minus, but we've got a lot of scary stuff coming down the road that could potentially impact our budget, our city's budgets with some of the state and federal changes.
What are you seeing in federal programs being cut that would affect Contra Costa County and the budget?
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I'm seeing it. First in healthcare. Some of the people that are insured through the county has its own health plan.
We are the Medi-Cal provider. Kaiser provides some of the Medi-Cal services as well, but we are the primary provider of that. And as you cut, who is eligible for Medi-Cal, you cut reimbursement rates. It's going to affect people living in Contra Costa, and we are gonna need to find ways to provide those services.
The SNAP program, the CalFresh program, which is like food stamps as we're seeing potential cutbacks or new requirements for that. We're gonna have a lot of people who need additional help with food and we've got great partners, whether it be the Food Bank of Contra Costa Solano County, or we have St.
Vincent De Paul. We have other organization, white Pony Express. Some of my food security partners, they're gonna need a lot of support. A lot of help as we see that happen and as we see the impact on our immigrant community, there's a lot of fear to access service regardless of someone's immigration status.
That is a big concern as well. And we're going to continue to see. Potential rollbacks of supportive services and we're gonna need to make sure that we can still provide those. But we're watching all of that carefully. Just we won't have probably the federal budget until, could be September or October.
While the county we're doing okay, we didn't have to make cuts at our budget. And we even have a little bit of general fund money that used to be. Money that we're looking to roll out into the community. We're gonna be starting to want more community input about what do people see the needs are?
Where are you seeing gaps with your neighbors of their needs? No one should go to bed hungry in our county. No one should go without access to a level of medical care so that we can all remain healthy. We want to keep people housed. It's always great to prevent someone from. Becoming homeless and how do we fill in those gaps?
We're getting our point in time count has just come out and we're doing a lot better than we did last year in housing our unhoused population. A lot of it's because we've been doing something called rapid rehousing. Those are areas where it's the basics. How do we help people be safe, fed, clothed, housed in our community, and how do we look out for one another?
One other question came to mind is they're not in your district, but Contra Costa has four refineries.
Yes.
That makes up a significant part of the county's budget.
Valero just announced its closing in Solano County. What do you see as chair? How would this impact your budget and what could be done to plan ahead?
The reality is that our refineries play a very important role, not just for the income they generate, but it's the jobs. And the jobs to create the jobs beyond that. They are important. I think one of the biggest challenges I have is that we're not ready to go all electric yet the technology is not there.
The, it's not a viable solution, and we still need fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. And anyone who says otherwise is creating a false narrative when you start producing. Fossil fuels offshore, you're gonna have more of an unsafe environment. 'cause we have a really very strict safety ordinance here in Contra Costa.
And more likely than not, you're going to be doing it in an unsafe way for the air quality because we have really strict air quality standards if we're going to be dependent still on fossil fuels throughout the world, I'd rather have them produced in Contra Costa County. Where we have those strict requirements in place because we all share the same atmosphere and the problem is it is just gonna get more expensive.
I am, sit on, as I mentioned, county connections board. Our electric buses have failed miserably. Not because we don't have a good bus manufacturer. We have a very bus. We have Gilli out of Livermore, but because the technology of the batteries continues to fail, they're heavy, they're big. The infrastructure to charge them as different, we run clean diesel buses with just a fragment of an impact on.
Air quality, but because we have regulations by our Air Quality board and by the state's air board that sort of have been demanding no, you've gotta go all electric buses. Our buses and buses up and down the state of California that are electric buses are sitting in bus yards because they're inoperable.
We need to find that balance of economic. Common sense and not just have this big whoosh for just transition. Shut down the refineries. We still need our refineries on Contra Costa. They are important partners. We do things the right way. They've gotta have them safe. And yes, we've had issues.
Martinez Refining had. Some very serious incidents, and I don't want to, in any way suggest those aren't serious incidents for safety, but the reality is we need to continue to ensure that we do have that economic production.
I appreciate your thoughts on that too. That's it's a good balance that you're trying to find there.
I think it's a time where I wanna encourage cooperation thoughtfulness, kindness to one another because it's a kind of a scary time out there for a lot of people and a lot of our vulnerable population. And I think we're really there to support one another. And I'm hoping people will focus on that.
And as the 4th of July, you're not gonna air this till August. I'm talking to you a little back in July. But I have great respect for our country and who we are as a nation, and I hate to see us divided, and I need people to start focusing on what is it that we agree on, what can we work on together instead of what divides us?
I think that would be my message.
Thank you for joining me, supervisor Candace Anderson. My pleasure.
My pleasure. Thank you so much and good to see
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