January 11, 2026
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Column: Time to Crack Down on Vacant Homes’ Owners

By Tom Elias, Columnist ​​There is no doubt California has a housing shortage. That’s fact even in the wake of the state auditor’s springtime report showing this state’s Department of Housing and Community Development figures […]

SMa.r.t. Column: “The Music of Cities”

Just returned from 4 weeks of Classical Tahoe and found last year’s article every bit, if not more meaningful, in echoing the beauty of music and environment, in contrast to the accelerated direction and deterioration […]

SMa.r.t. Column: Why Native Gardens?

Voltaire said it best at the end of his 1759 novel  Candide: “We must cultivate our own garden”. This simple phrase has special meaning today as the ecological noose tightens with brownouts (1/4 of our […]

SMa.r.t. Column: We’re All Wet – Not!

Don’t you think that if you heard, or read, statements from controlling government agencies that said you were threatened by a health hazard if the threatening condition was allowed to continue unabated, and the same […]

SMar.t. Column: Has the Promenade Turned a Corner?

In large complex systems with dynamically balanced forces, it’s paradoxically often hard to tell when something has actually happened, For example, when did the British Empire start to crumble? What was the first sign of […]