Thank You for an Amazing Book

I want to thank Rick Kelly for his amazing book about Castro Valley history called “Rancho to Ranch Homes: Mapping the Evolution of Castro Valley, California”. I highly recommend this book for the depth of detail that is included as well as the personal touches and stories that really make it shine. I learned a lot about the town I love and was filled with pride as I read about how the leaders of Castro Valley planned for the future of our town and then I realized something troublesome. Despite the population of Castro Valley growing rapidly since the 1980’s, the vast majority of our infrastructure and planning projects are over 50 years old, and it shows. We have few sidewalks. The streets and roads are sized for half as many cars. The recent “atmospheric river” overwhelmed our undersized sewer and storm drain systems. High speed internet is not possible in many neighborhoods. We have at least 6 less public schools than when I was a kid. We have a parking problem that is only going to get worse when BART removes half of their parking to build multi story housing. We have only a single hospital with less beds than we used to have (remember Laurel Grove Hospital)? Castro Valley infrastructure has not kept pace with her growth!

This is not a problem unique to Castro Valley. There are over 1.6 million people who live in unincorporated communities throughout the state of California who are in a similar state of limbo and need more infrastructure help. The vast majority of State and Federal ARPA and Covid Relief funding left the unincorporated areas behind because we were not united and advocating for our needs strongly enough. 17 of these communities have started to talk with one another and have been working for solutions on CAUnincorporated.com and I urge my neighbors to do so as well so that we don’t fall even further behind.

–Peter Rosen, Castro Valley