You might not know it by reading online comments, but the vast majority of Pleasanton residents are delighted to live here. The city’s satisifcation survey, which has been professionally done since 1995, showed that 96 percent of residents rated the quality of life as excellent or good. That number has held consistent since 2007.
That’s a remarkable standard, one that any organization would be thrilled to receive.
Residents also rated the city as very safe and an excellent place to raise children—exactly what you would expect. The city has ample—to understate it—resources thanks to its sales tax and property tax base and maintains high levels of service across the departments. Couple that with the test scores in the school district and it’s a highly desirable place for upscale parents to raise their children.
When it comes to issues, growth and development was a concern to one in five, while about one in 10 were concerned about affordable housing. Concerns about local traffic ranked between the two. Simply stated, there are issues, but a huge majority of the residents are quite happy living here.

Amazon has been soliciting bids across the nation for its second company headquarters, a huge project that could involve up to $5 billion spent on construction and over time employ as many as 50,000 people.
The Bay Area, led by the Bay Area Council, brought together seven cities to submit a single bid. The bid, which included no tax incentives, included sites around the East Bay, many close to public transit. Writers argued that the Amazon, which already has a presence in the South Bay and San Francisco, would be better served by scattering sites than by building a huge corporate campus.
The cities included in the bid are: Concord (the former naval weapons station site), Oakland, Fremont, Richmond, Pittsburg, Union City and San Francisco. San Jose and Vallejo are submitting their own bids. There’s no question that the Bay Area is a center of innovation, but it’s also the most expensive area to live in because of the lack of housing plus its price and nearly matches Seattle in traffic congestion.
Because of its distribution system and its two-day Prime service, plus its goal of same-day service, Amazon has facilities across the county. It has two huge distribution centers in Tracy. It has extracted concessions from local governments in many locations. Stay tuned to see if the company bites on the Bay Area proposal, but it was notable that seven cities could be pulled together into a common bid.