Jim Wunderman Quotations

Education is critical, We've got to do more and we've got to do it quickly.

The signs are about as bright as they've been for a long time. We've got the highest confidence in hiring that we've seen since we started doing the survey, with the biggest spread between employers planning to hire and those planning to diminish their workforce.

The Bay Area's educational performance is showing improvement, but that's not sufficient. We've been handling, to some degree, the growth of the economy through improvements in efficiency, but that may be a slippery slope. There's clearly a need to create a housing economy that can attract more people to the region to satisfy the demands of economic growth.

The Bay Area is not prepared for its next major disaster. The painful lessons that emerged from recent disasters in the United States drive our passion to protect the Bay Area. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina revealed the unthinkable cost in terms of lives and money of haphazard planning and irresolute leadership. Not putting ferries on the Bay for disaster recovery is like New Orleans not strengthening its levees, knowing a hurricane was coming. The threats to the Bay Area are well known and we must act urgently to avoid repeating this tragedy.

This is a continued cry for help from the people stuck in traffic each day whose only option is to grip the steering wheel tighter. This is both a state and a regional failure to address the problem. We've really shortchanged infrastructure in the state and in the region over the past decade, and it's taken its toll.

We've finally been able to get political leaders to agree that it's time for a major infrastructure investment. Things are moving in the right direction.

I think people realize what's at stake here.

First and foremost transportation. Every time we ask, Bay Area business leaders and voters tell us that's the number one headache in the Bay Area. Number two education ... third is affordable housing.

This is really an emergency system. But we would have the opportunity to enhance everyday service.

There's already been clear motion from housing to equities, but it isn't to the level that we can say it's part of a long-term trend.