How has life in the Bay Area changed over the last 20 years? These stories straight from our Bay City News archives capture news of the day from 5, 10, and 20 years ago – as originally published at the time. Explore these history snapshots and ponder how today’s news compares to that of years past.
JULY 17, 2021
Youth mental health access remains a central challenge for cities trying to make services easier to find. San Jose’s OneSJ platform shows students and city technologists building multilingual tools for residents navigating a fragmented support system.
Bay City News Reported:
“San Jose Launches Youth Mental Health Platform”
The city of San Jose launched a new community-build mental health platform on Friday that helps youth and young adults to find services.
OneSJ, a website offered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, lists mental health services both in the city and throughout the Bay Area. It allows users to filter services by categories like domestic violence, unhoused, LGBTQIA and student.
“This is a for us, by us approach to building better digital services in the public sector,” said Clay Garner, the city’s deputy chief innovation officer.
OneSJ is the first product to launch from the Digital Action Corps — an initiative from the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation that works with technologically inclined high school and college level students to create digital solutions for pressing city challenges.
Currently, four San Jose State University students/alumni sit on the Digital Action Corps, which provides students interested in tech with mentorship to help fulfill career goals.
“They ultimately identified the problem (youth/young adult mental health crisis), designed the solution, and built the website,” city spokesperson Gina Rodriguez said. “The SJSU team volunteered their talent and time to support San Jose in a time of need.”
The students are SJSU graduate Justin Mata, graduating senior Angela Pham, graduating senior Flor Sario and undergraduate student Kunwarpreet Singh.
JULY 17, 2016
Property values remain the fiscal engine behind San Francisco services and the pressure behind its affordability debate. The assessment milestone shows the city’s tax base reaching a new high as real estate growth shaped public budgets.
Bay City News reported:
“San Francisco Property Assessment Tops $200 Billion”
San Francisco’s total property assessment exceeded $200 billion for the first time when the fiscal year 2016-17 assessment was submitted, according to preliminary information Wednesday from San Francisco’s Office of the Assessor-Recorder.
The preliminary information said the assessment is $208 billion or nearly 9 percent higher than the previous fiscal year.
The assessment must be certified by the city’s Office of the Controller before it’s final.
Property taxes are based on the assessment. Property taxes pay for services in San Francisco such as public safety, health and social services.
Once the assessment is certified, Controller’s Office staff will send the assessment to the Treasurer & Tax Collector’s office, whose employees will mail out property tax bills.
JULY 17, 2006
Election administration still depends on details that can shape behavior even before voters mark a ballot. The Stanford study shows researchers warning that polling-place settings may matter in close contests.
Bay City News reported:
“Stanford Study Finds Polling Places Can Influence Votes“
According to a new study by the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, polling locations could affect the outcome of close elections because different settings, such as schools and churches, could encourage people to think favorably toward a ballot initiative or candidate.
In the study released today, Stanford researchers Jonah Berger, Marc Meredith and S. Christian Wheeler conclude that environmental cues at polling locations could subtly push voters to support a proposition.
“The influence of polling location on voting found in our research would be more than enough to change the outcome of a close election,” Wheeler said in a statement, adding that polling location biases could play a role even in close presidential elections, like the 2000 race between President Bush and Al Gore.
Environmental cues, such as objects or places, can influence the way individuals behave, Berger said.
“Voting in a school, for example, could activate the part of a person’s identity that cares about kids, or norms about taking care of the community. Similarly, voting in a church could activate norms of following church doctrine. Such effects may even occur outside an individual’s awareness,” he said.
The researchers found that people who voted in schools were more likely to support raising the state sales tax to fund education. Using data from Arizona’s 2000 general election, the researchers focused on a proposition that proposed hiking up the state sales tax to increase education spending. They concluded that those who cast their ballots at schools were more likely to back the initiative, with 55 percent of voters at schools versus 53 percent of voters elsewhere supporting the proposition, even when controls were used and factors such as demographics, where voters lived and political views were ruled out.
Furthermore, voters who cast their ballots at schools did not back unrelated propositions more than those who voted elsewhere, the study’s authors concluded.
Lab experiments also found that people who viewed pictures of schools or churches before voting were more inclined to support education initiatives if shown school images rather than church or generic photos. People who viewed church images, meanwhile, were less likely to support stem cell initiatives, like California’s 2004 stem cell funding proposition.
“What our research suggests is that it might be useful to further investigate influences such as polling location to better understand how such factors affect different types of voting situations,” Wheeler said. “From a policy perspective, the hope is that a voting location assignment could be less arbitrary and more determined in order to avoid undue biases in the future.”
Editor’s Note: All the reporting, writing, and editing of this content was done by human journalists at the time of initial publication. AI tools were used to surface these stories from our internal Bay City News archives and provide the introductory context.