Consider just a few recent newspaper headlines: California’s San Joaquin Valley given more time to clean up some of the nation’s dirtiest air.  Legislators bicker over plans to shore up the fragile San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta.  Thirsty Californians battle fish for water.  Budget-cutting threatens efforts to save California’s farmland.  Species are added to the federal Endangered Species Act.  Farmers decide to sell their water, rather than their crops.  Battle looms over alternative energy policies.  Aging dams threaten communities.

Simply keeping water flowing down the state’s rivers to grow California crops, quench Californians’ thirst and keep the recreational-tourist industry alive is a major struggle these days.

There is no end to the challenges faced by Californians, their elected leaders and public policy makers.  In the weeks, months and hopefully years ahead, PlanningBeat.com will explore some of these issues, bringing insights and encouraging discussion of important developments affecting our quality of life.

After retiring from a public agency planning career, I helped form South Valley Solutions, a consulting firm that blends land-use planning, mediation, negotiation, strategic planning, community and government relations, and public outreach to find “solutions” to day-to-day, as well as long-term problems that face us as a nation, state, community or as individuals. (Go to www.SVS2Help.com to learn more about the firm.)

To find these “solutions” requires us to be informed about the public policies and developments affecting our daily lives.  Keeping ourselves informed is a difficult task made even more difficult by the financial setbacks that have hit newspapers and broadcast outlets.  Blame the decline of economy-sensitive advertising for these setbacks that have resulted in reporting staff cutbacks and the loss of many veteran journalists who once covered California’s environmental battles.  It now falls to all of us – professionals paid to monitor public policy and quality of life developments, as well as individuals who live and breathe in California communities -- to keep ourselves informed.

PlanningBeat.com will present informative, thought-provoking articles about how California and its communities are growing.  These articles will range from the serious to the bizarre. Hopefully all will be downright entertaining.

You can help.  If you have a story idea, or a question you would like researched, just comment to this blog or e-mail planningbeat@yahoo.com.