Say you’re Jeff Kolin. You’ve worked as Santa Rosa’s city manager for nine years and built such a strong professional reputation that the city of Beverly Hills — swimming pools, movie stars — concludes that you are the top choice as its new city manager.
You’re asked if you would consider leaving Santa Rosa and coming to Beverly Hills, where you will be paid handsomely to run a city that is 85 percent smaller than Santa Rosa (not even six square miles) and has 78 percent fewer people (only about 36,000) but, even so, enjoys a larger city budget.
You would say what Jeff Colin is saying.
It’s been great, Santa Rosa, but now I’ve to go to 90210.
To help him out, I phoned a real estate agency in Beverly Hills and asked what a decent family home would run. Among the 129 houses that sold there over the past six months, the average price was a tad under $3 million.
Kolin said, “I’m going to be looking for a below-average house.’
Chris Smith has been writing for The Press Democrat for more than 30 years and has been a full-time columnist with the newspaper since 2002. After graduating from San Jose State University with a degree in reporting and editing, he worked as a reporter for the Riverside Press-Enterprise and the weekly Independent Coast Observer in Gualala/The Sea Ranch before becoming a correspondent for The Press Democrat in Fort Bragg/Mendocino. He is married to