Personal News - Moved to Montana

I haven't posted on this blog in nearly a year.  That's because I moved to Missoula, Montana for a new job in Fall 2024.  I am now Director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) at the University of Montana. After 16 years at Pacific, my kids in their mid-twenties telling me there was a 0% chance they would come back to California, and a remote working spouse - it was time to think about a career move and this opportunity in Montana fit my interests very well.  The past 10 months have been very busy, and I completely forgot about this blog.

While I won't be maintaining this blog regularly, I am going to keep it published because I can see that people are still reading the old posts.  I am still following things in California, so I will still come over here and post from time to time.  Especially if I have something to say about the Delta or California water issues, as Delta/water posts have consistently gotten more views than posts about other topics since the beginning.  

Getting back on here made me a bit nostalgic, so I was looking at the list of the most read posts of all time and rereading a few.  Some observations in the top 20 posts (out of 629 over 16 years).

The #1 post of all time is actually not about the Delta or Water.  With over 20,000 page views, it is

a 2015 post, "An Encouraging Story for Downtown Stockton."

The top rated Delta/water post is #3 on the all time list.  Over 5,000 views for this 2020 entry on the first cost estimate for Governor Newsom's single-tunnel plan.

New $15.9 bil. Delta tunnel cost estimate: Revisiting DWR's 2018 single-tunnel economic analysis with updated costs shows it is a bad investment for water agencies

#5 on the all-time list is one of my personal favorites - many people told me they learned and enjoyed this one from 2016/2012 with nearly 2,000 views.  Jason Peltier is still making sense on delta tunnel economics: A look back 4 years shows the WaterFix is an even worse financial deal than the BDCP

Interestingly, some of the most recent posts about the Delta tunnel from last summer have cracked the blogs all-time top 25 with over 1200 views and have seen an uptick in traffic with people revisiting them since Governor Newsom introduced his trailer bills to promote the tunnel.