The Burlingame Voice

Covid Updates: Yellow Tier, Now What?

With the big move to the yellow tier in San Mateo County this week, the Saturday update deserves a fresh post.  You can find our year+ of tracking at this post and the prior one.  Dinner downtown last night was a full-house affair with the conversational noise levels reaching pre-pandemic levels plus a tad.  I went up to the new Outdoor Supply Hardware as well and a few people were wandering the outdoor nursery area sans masks--it felt a little weird, but we will get used to it.  I will still track the numbers for the week which are:

77.4% of the County over age 16 is vaccinated and the age limit to do so dropped to 12 (Pfizer).  That is a small increase from last week.

Total Cases: 41,909 (+162 in the County)

Positivity: .7% (down another tenth)

Burlingame Cases: 1,244 (ONLY ONE new case this week; 34 in the last 30 days).

Now you see how we got to yellow.  Here's what that means:

Dr. Curtis Chan, deputy health officer with San Mateo County, said the change moves the county away from the mentality of strict government restrictions and toward a new era of common courtesy, community agreements and more relaxed mask scenarios.

“We are not emphasizing health officer orders. We want to emphasize caring. For fully vaccinated people, face coverings are not required, but also social agreement and common courtesy could be taken into consideration,” Chan said.  Chan believes there will be a reduced need for mask restrictions in the coming months, and he hopes mask restrictions will be additionally loosened by July 4.  “I would hope that would be around the date when mask social agreements are going to be eased up a little bit,” he said.

"Social agreement".  Got that?

Electric Cars: Not So Fast

Someday I will probably buy an electric vehicle (EV).  Most of us probably will because we will be forced to via government policies--overt and covert.  The overt policies are moves like mandating tight emissions standards, rebates and credits and the like.  The covert policies slip in as dedicated parking spaces or stopping new gas stations from being built.  But the switch over won't happen anytime soon as the AP reported awhile back with this article: America’s gas-fueled vehicles imperil Biden’s climate goals

In a rare display of data analysis the reporter gets to the bottom line conclusion that some of the big headline goals from politicians like Biden and Newsom are just not feasible.

For President Joe Biden to reach his ambitious goal of slashing America’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, huge reductions would have to come from somewhere other than one of the worst culprits: auto tailpipes.

That’s because there are just too many gas-powered passenger vehicles in the United States — roughly 279 million — to replace them in less than a decade, experts say. In a typical year, automakers sell about 17 million vehicles nationwide. Even if every one of the new ones were electric, it would take more than 16 years to replace the whole fleet.  What’s more, vehicles now remain on America’s roads for an average of nearly 12 years before they’re scrapped, which means that gas-fueled vehicles will predominate for many years to come.

Last year, fewer than 2% of new vehicles sold in the United States were fully electric.  To increase sales of electric vehicles, the administration plans to spend $15 billion to build a half-million charging stations by 2030, as well as offer unspecified tax credits and rebates to cut the cost.  Swapping the entire fleet of gas burners for electric vehicles could take even longer than 20 years. Todd Campau, associate director of automotive for IHS Markit, estimates that the number of mostly gas-powered vehicles on U.S. roads, will keep growing — to 284 million by 2025.  “If half of new cars sold around the world in 2035 are zero-emission vehicles, 70% of the vehicles on roads will still be burning gasoline or diesel,” the report said.

There are other fun factoids about the real, achievable pace of change to EVs, their batteries and other energy uses for those interested in clicking through to read them.  The other half of the story, that is not part of this article is how gasoline is a by-product of refining petroleum for benzene and other chemicals which will still happen because they are still needed in millions of products, including aspirin and other drugs.  Gas vehicles become a smaller portion of the fleet, but gas is still being produced and that equals a bargain at the pump and a tougher sell for EVs.  

SB9 and YIMBY Carpetbaggers

The irony of the YIMBY movement is that for the most part YIMBY's don't actually have backyards--they're just jealous of other people's backyards.  Couple financial jealousy with a tinge of misplaced racism--what I have termed neo-racism--and you get political pressure to destroy single-family zoning as noted here.  A letter to the Comicle today decries this "home shaming".  I'll add it to the comment section.  But people are waking up to the threat posed by Senate Bill 9 and the YIMBY carpetbaggers.  Regular Voice reader Laura has crafted a call to action for us and asked me to share it:

Please be aware of what Sacramento is doing and how it affects our town.  Burlingame is under siege by Sacramento, large Construction Developers, and affordable housing advocates that seek to disrupt the successful balance of single family and multi-family housing that we have in our town today!  They are showing up in numbers for the Zoom City Council meetings and they are advocating for SB-9. 

SB-9 has the potential to change our town forever. In a nutshell, SB-9 rezones all parcels within single-family residential zones, to allow for the creation of up to 10 units on one residential lot, no matter how small the lot size, with NO parking requirement.  That means that your neighbor's home, could become a 10 unit building and neither you, nor your local Council could do anything about it.  SB-9 is one of dozens of similar bills, all designed to erode local control over land-use. 

Our Burlingame Community supported a General Plan revision in 2019 that allows for reasonable growth that our schools, roads, and water infrastructure can accommodate. This plan meets our State mandated housing goals. Burlingame presently has more multi-family residential units as a percentage of housing (53% compared to 47% for single family) than any other city in San Mateo County except East Palo Alto.  We are doing our part and have accomplished this with local control and balance!  Don’t let the outsiders say otherwise.  It is just not true.  

Please let your representatives know that you support your Council's local control over our city’s zoning and do not want interference from Large developers and outside housing advocates that care nothing for your quality of life, or your town.

Please voice your concern to Burlingame City Council at Council@Burlingame.org 

 

Assembly member Kevin  Mullin                                                 Senator Josh Becker

assemblymember.mullin@assembly.ca.gov 

                                                                          https://sd13.senate.ca.gov/contact

916-319-2022                                                                              (916) 651-4013

650-349-2200                                                                                (650) 212-3313

State Senior Scott Weiner 

 Senator.weiner@senate.ca.gov

916-651-4013

650-212-3313

Bayfront: Hotels or Life Sciences...just not housing

You could argue that the Covid pandemic is drawing to a close as we approach herd immunity and with it we will see a return to business and leisure travel.  With that a return of the hotel TOT that has been one of the Golden Geese keeping B'game flush would be in the cards.  Or not.  Maybe Zoom and work at home will take a serious dent out of travel.  For now though at least one erstwhile hotel developer on the Bayfront wants the freedom to build differently to attract life sciences tenants.  As this piece in the DJ notes, the Planning Commission is somewhat amenable as are some city councilors.

With the pandemic interrupting the travel and hospitality industries, Burlingame officials are considering introducing the life sciences industry into an area historically preserved for hotels and light industry.  But they balanced those perspectives against an expectation that developers proposing life science buildings would be obligated to supplement their plans with an attractive package of community benefits.

Under the proposal, buildings reserved for tenants in the life sciences industries could be allowed to build a floor-area ratio up to 3.0 — a significant spike from the current standard of 0.75 floor-area ratio for every building in the area other than hotels.

And while support for the vision was broad during a challenging time in the travel and hospitality industry, officials also made clear they continued to prefer development of hotels along the Bayshore.

Noting that hotel tax has been one of the city’s primary sources of income when the economy was thriving, Councilman Michael Brownrigg said he favored preserving incentives for future hotel construction.

TOT has traditionally been about 38% of total city revenues in normal times as noted here back in 2016.  Nobody is suggesting tearing down existing hotels to change the usage, meaning that revenue stream should rebound, but may not reach the percentages of the past.  But the most interesting aspect of the proposal didn't make it into the DJ article.  I have it on good authority that life sciences companies need.....wait for it.....natural gas for their labs.  One source at Genentech called it a "deal killer".  Can the green councilors put aside their one-year old ban and grant a variance?   If one gets it, then the next one is entitled as well.  And if a company can get a variance for a big installation, will you be able to get one for a small installation?

Recycling: Not Working Out as Planned

I'm intrigued by things that are not what they seem or don't play out as planned.  From the sound of a Wall Street Journal article this week titled "Recycling Isn’t as Clear-Cut as You Might Think", the blue bins are not what they seem.  I'm not a supporter of some of the green restrictions we are seeing creep into our lives, but recycling gets a big thumbs up ever since my parents recycled newspapers and magazines in the '60s.  It just made sense then.  But is it making sense now, especially since we are still paying a nickel of CRV on every bottle and can?  Here's the bad news.

More than 90% of plastics generated in the U.S. each year winds up in landfills or incinerators, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.  Only about 9% is recycled.  Plastics that have the potential to be recycled are stamped with a triangle made of three arrows enclosing a resin-identification code—a digit from 1 to 7 that indicates the type of plastic—but the presence of the emblem doesn’t guarantee the waste will be reused, even if it makes it into a recycling bin.

“From the curbside, it’s generally the 1s and 2s and some of the 5s,” said Bret Biggers, an economist with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. “Anything else, they have to pay to get rid of it.  Resin codes 1, 2 and 5 are processed domestically and, along with aluminum, they’re the most valuable recycling commodities, Mr. Bell said.

Since 2017, China is not taking foreign recycling waste so the prices are dropping

Code             Product                      Market Price of recycled material

1                   clear bottles                    .13  cents per pound

2                   colored bottles                .60 - .70

5                   yogurt cups                      .30

Aluminum      cans                                 .55 

3, 4, 6, 7                                               worthless   

And the kicker at the end of the piece is

“All of your careful sorting of recyclables will go to waste if you put recyclables into a black plastic trash bag—and often your efforts will be for naught even if you put them into a clear plastic recycling bag.”  Processing facilities won’t open black bags. Clear bags have the potential to get tangled in machinery.

I didn't know that and I'll bet very few housekeepers do either.  I've always just dumped the individual pieces in the blue bin, but I notice that the housekeepers think they are doing a cleaner and easier job if they toss the whole bag of bottles and cans in the bin.

I won't paste in the chart that shows the 20 year climb to 90% that goes to landfill or the incinerator--it's too depressing.  But I do wonder if it is time to retire the CRV.  People who are in the habit will keep recycling and those that don't may only be causing 9% as much harm as we thought.     

Music to my Ears... in San Mateo

I got out to hear some live music this past week.  Local guitarist Sam Marshall was playing at the Coyote Point golf course Par 3 restaurant outside under a tent.   It was only the second show I have seen in more than a year, but it portends good things to come.  We had one new Covid case in B'game this week.  Yep, one.  We've had 56 in the last 30 days, so the rate is tailing off.  Lots of people are saying "just got my second shot".  I would say it's time for some carefully organized, outside entertainment to start here in B'game.  Let's not let San Mateans have all the fun!

Here's Sam playing the blues and some classic rock accompanied by backing tracks on his phone.  His tip jar was filling up nicely too.

Earth Day 2021: Realism vs. Hope

Fellow earthlings, on this fine Earth Day let's take stock of the global trend.  We will leave determining the local B'game impact to the reader, just this once, except for a hint.  From today's WSJ piece titled "Smaller Energy Firms Bet on Acquiring Fossil-Fuel Assets" we learn

Major oil companies such as BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC are selling billions of dollars of assets to bolster their finances and reduce carbon emissions, while mining companies including Anglo American PLC and Rio Tinto PLC have exited coal projects.  Snapping up those unloved assets is a band of smaller competitors that wager that fossil fuels will remain the world’s main energy source for years to come.  “While I agree that the direction of traffic is one way, toward renewables, I think it’s going to take longer than people think,” said Blair Thomas, chairman of Harbour Energy PLC.

In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hammered global transportation and industry, oil, natural gas and coal accounted for 81% of global energy consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. That figure is forecast to drop to 76% by 2030, though rising overall demand means using even more carbon-intensive energy.  While the world’s wealthiest countries might have already hit peak oil demand, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, forecasts that countries such as China and India will drive oil consumption up 43% by 2045 from 2019 levels.  Developing economies don’t have the luxury of accelerating their transition away from fossil fuels, said Mike Teke, chief executive of Seriti Resources, a coal-mining company.

"When one door closes, another opens" as the saying goes.  Now the hint from the city e-newsletter:

Induction cooktops are touted as high performance alternatives to gas cooking. They are fast, efficient, and don't use open flames. You can sign up to borrow an induction cooktop for two weeks and see how it works for yourself.

You don't even need your library card...... 

Dividing Up the County...Again

Thanks to some hack lawyer from Malibu we are embarking on an expensive and pointless experiment to divide up the City Council and the San Mateo Unified high school district into geographic fiefdoms.  That's what the arcane state law that most think cannot be argued says; so be it.  The San Mateo County Supes are already district-based as befits a big sprawling region like the County of about 750,000 residents. With a new census about to be completed, the district lines need to be updated.  Here is the DJ reporting on the criteria for the 11 people who will work on the redistricting:

“Diversity and inclusion — those are guiding principles here in San Mateo County and those qualities are what we are looking for on this extremely important Commission,” David Canepa, president of the Board of Supervisors, said in a press release.  All applications will be forwarded to a committee formed by and composed of local chapter members of the League of Women Voters.

I can't imagine who thought the LWV was a good screening body for this job.  Their last half dozen debate moderation efforts in B'game city council elections were...underwhelming.  Some years the representative could barely read the questions properly.  The old saw about preferring the first hundred names (sometimes 2,000 names) in the Boston phone book, or in this case, the Burlingame phone book applies.

But there is more

The selection process will prioritize applicants associated with good government, civil rights, civic engagement and community groups or organizations that are active in the county, including those active in language minority communities, with the goal of forming a commission with membership that is geographically diverse and consistent with the county’s emphasis on valuing diversity, equity and inclusion, according to the county.

I'm all for good government (if the LWV and the Supes have stated criteria that one can assess for that) and geographic diversity (duh, that's the point), but what of the rest of the word soup?  How about the ability to parse the past voting data numerically?  Does an applicant know mean from median?  Can they assess the strengths and weaknesses of the census data?  I was required to fill out the Big Census Questionnaire this year and as a former market research professional I can tell you its format was sub-standard against industry norms.

Bottom Line:  The current district lines probably won't change much and it won't make much difference in who wins each seat, but the PR spin still grates on my ears.  When it comes time to do the City Council districts and the SMUSHD districts, I hope the League of Women Voters are relegated to the sidelines.    

BIS: What's Up With That?

A newcomer to B'game and to the Voice has asked a question that has a long history of being asked in town.  Rather than have everyone scroll through the comments on this January post about the BSD Board to see the question, here is a fresh post that readers can weigh in on.  Let's start with the question from Caitlin

I have 3 kids, bought a house in Burlingame a little over a year ago as I understood the public schools are excellent.

I recently started hearing that the Elementary schools and the high school are great (minus the Principal issues from a few years ago), however lots of people have mixed feelings about BIS. Didn't hear anything specific but am told BIS is the ugly duckling of the district?

Can anyone share why BIS might be considered the Ugly Duckling?

My experiences at BIS with two kids were mixed, but it was so long ago that I hesitate to weigh in on the 2021 outlook.  My second thought was much along the lines of HMB's quick response on the other post to Caitlin's question--nobody likes middle school or "junior high school" as it was called in Massachusetts in the '70s.  Not the kids, not the parents, probably not the teachers or administrators, but they do their best.  HMB noted

Because it's middle school. Kids from all over are thrown into one school, and hormones are raging, and these are tricky years for kids anyway. And the parent cliques ALSO have to find a new pecking order once they are thrown together. So parents and kids all come in kind of a mess and by the time everyone figures it out and settles down they are off to high school. It's just the nature of the beast.

Perhaps there is more to it than the age/rage mixture.  Let's ask the community.  We have certainly poured a notable amount of money into the facilities like this new wing built five years ago so it ain't the campus.  What say you current and recent parents?

Put Down the Phone and Drive

Here is a small but gratifying snippet of news that was in yesterday's Daily Post.  You probably didn't see it because there are only about four newspaper boxes in town that have the Post regularly.  I get it in San Mateo.

Kudos to BPD for making the local streets safer.  I see this violation all the time when I am walking around town, so let's do it again real soon.  Ten instances is a drop in the bucket.

Update:  I got some further insight from BPD on this effort. 

The distracted driving enforcement is part of a grant B'game gets from the State’s Office of Traffic Safety.  The grant funds fifteen 4-hour enforcement details throughout the year (with 2 officers per detail).  They are broken down as follows:

• 2 bicycle/pedestrian safety details
• 6 distracted driving details
• 7 details at high accident areas in town

The grant also funds 2 DUI checkpoints, 4 larger collaborative traffic enforcement details and some officer training.  The grant year runs from October 2020 thru September 2021.  We have completed 6 of the details so far and still have 9 to go.  BPD tries to do them about once a month, so there are more to come.

2021 Spring Treehugger Post

We may be way behind on rainfall and we are not going to "catch up" this year, but the trees got enough to do well so far.  We will see stress later in the Summer and Fall, but for now the Spring bloom was excellent in B'game.  The lovely white street trees that took the Spring honors last year did well again, but I have to give the prize to the non-bearing cherry trees that some of my neighbors were smart enough to plant years ago.  I haven't seen any on the public median strip, but the ones on private property have been spectacular.  Like this one

Zoom Public Meetings: Pros & More Cons

I connected the dots this week between a headline and article in my hometown newspaper in Massachusetts and a letter to the editor in the DJ.  The connection is a continuation of a link I've mentioned before about how public meetings (i.e. city council, school board, planning, etc) are changed by the "Zoom ethos".  I've seen some council comments that might not have happened if there were 20 or 30 people in chambers staring at the council members.  The hometown headline read The writing's on the screen: Municipal meetings via Zoom might be here to stay.   In some contexts that sentence construction is ominous and this might be one of them.  Here are a couple of snippets:

Jane Doe likes to be able to “pop in” to a town government meeting remotely on her computer.  She’ll typically view discussion about the agenda item she finds of interest, possibly add a comment and then pop out of the meeting and get on with her evening.  “It’s like a whole new paradigm — a whole new world,” she said. “And a lot of it has been absolutely fabulous. I think there is a democratizing element in some ways. More people can access the meetings, and they don’t have to rearrange their whole lives to go there in person.”

Bearing in mind that this is a place with less tech savvy than the Peninsula where the video of the meetings isn't typically on cable TV or Granicus for review later.  But now the downsides

“Maintaining a civil discourse can be a bit more challenging,” the town manager e said. “I think, in the remote setting, there is a reduction in social inhibitions that leads people to speak more freely.  We have a lot more people participating, but in some cases, the meeting format is new to them. And you lose a lot of the personal connection — there are people we’ve been engaging with who none of us have ever met in person. In a way, we’ve lost the sense that we all live in the same town together."

Cue the letter from a San Mateo resident

I read the 4/1 article, “San Mateo Begins Housing Discussion” with interest and amazement. It described a “discussion” I would have liked to attend. Wait a minute! I did participate in Let’s Talk Housing’s online meeting. My experience was not even close to what the article described. Everyone lost 20 minutes due to technical problems. Many who registered were unable to log in. We also lost an essential poll of attendees. Residents? Workers here? Property owners? It might have supported my observation that many attendees did not live here.  It became clear that this was like a written “open mike.” People began posting random ideas, suggestions, beliefs, on the “chat” feature, even as the presentations were going on.  At two points, some of those ideas (often out of context) were pulled into “word clouds” of what people cared about — with zero sense of the writers’ intent.

One of the moderators finally pulled down the chat because the 180 degree back and forth was getting so out of hand.  The city should view this meeting’s results to be as questionable as residents who attended know them to be. If this is supposed to be what a productive workshop and discussion of housing looks like, we might as well stop right now.

I spent more than a decade of my professional career refining the way to have video-conferenced meetings with in-person and remote attendees, some well-known, others like clients that were identified but perhaps not well-known to other attendees and all tech savvy.  Cisco WebEx pre-dates Zoom by years and still renders a good viewing experience.  It is not easy even when the bulk of the people mostly share a similar community, time zone and language.  Don't get me started on the global version of this challenge.  It's clear the cities, the county, the school boards and various agencies and commissions will need some ground rules.  I think you will eventually see "chat" disabled in favor of typed questions and comments to the admin, pre-registration with a verified identity and even town of residence required (hear that Delta, Coke and the MLB?) and a return to in-person meetings with preference given to those that appear live when time runs short.  Can't happen soon enough.