The Burlingame Voice

What's up with California school administration?

Thankfully this post is not about Burlingame but given what we read on some of our longest running School posts like this one from October 2022 there may be some learning to be gained by looking at recent events at Pittsburg High School.  The Chronicle had a piece about the PE teacher and football coach at Pittsburg High School that left me with many questions.  First, some details with extra bolding:

When school officials in the East Bay city of Pittsburg were told that a high school football coach had been accused of groping female students, they reprimanded him repeatedly for at least a decade — but allowed him to keep his job after each instance, then to quietly retire. In an agreement on the terms of his departure, the district made a major concession: It promised not to tell prospective employers about the coach’s history.

The complaints about former Pittsburg High School coach Phillip Webb finally surfaced Wednesday after a lawsuit was filed by two of his alleged victims, young women who said he had touched them inappropriately when they were students in 2015 and 2016. Documents obtained by the women’s lawyers show that officials told Webb at least a half dozen times to change his behavior but never punished him.

The state Commission on Teacher Credentialing issued a reproval against Webb this May, but did not revoke the teaching credential he had been issued in 1985. He had taught physical education in addition to coaching football.  That means Webb could still apply to other California school districts to work with youngsters.  The agreement was provided to the Chronicle by Lauren Cerri, an attorney for the two women, who obtained it under the California Public Records Act.

Webb did not address any of the claims in the lawsuit, and said any further questions should be directed to his attorney. He has not been charged with any crimes.

You can read through many of the details on-line as it is a long piece.  But it begs so many questions.  Many incidents were reported by students and other teachers (e.g. 2007, 2013, 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2022!). That last one was on a security camera.  How many warnings do principals and superintendents hand out before they do something more?  How transparent with the school community are they--and should they be when it's a "personnel issue"?  Where's the school board oversight?  One of the girls' fathers is quoted and is angry and confused by the apparent inaction, but at what point does a parent call their local police?  We've read a bit about the Commission on Teacher Credentialing here on the Voice.  What exactly does the CTC do?  What sort of investigative resources do they have?  How high is their hurdle?

What's up with the agreement about retirement in three months and the secrecy?  Some of that is certainly personnel record law.  That's where the Chronicle ends the piece

A 2014 law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown made it easier for schools to fire educators who commit misconduct, but many still choose to allow them to resign or retire in order to avoid potential legal battles. Bills that would forbid schools from entering into secret agreements that keep misconduct hidden from prospective employers have hit a dead end in the California Legislature.

More questions.  How easy is it to fire someone under the nine-year old law?  All sorts of crazy stuff sails through the California Legislature and gets signed by governors, but this hits a dead end?  What's up with that, supermajority?

Fall 2023 Treehugger Post

Last Fall's treehugger post came from the historic Baywood district of San Mateo.  This year we get right back to the historic Burlingame Park district--home of the Voice!  I'm told this is a Chinese Fringe tree and it's awesome.  It turns out it is really a flowering shrub with the official name Chionanthus retusus according to Wikipedia.

I love how the leaves turn in phases and the phases don't always seem to align with more (or less) sun exposure.  The backside is still shades of green, but others I see in the 'hood are green on the sunny side.  The blood red tree behind the Chinese fringe makes a gorgeous pairing.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Baywood: Chronicle "skirts" the truth

There are a number of reasons why I call the SF Chronicle the "Comicle".  I might have plagiarized it from Herb Caen decades ago.  There is so much slanted "news" some days that it seems like the whole edition is a comic strip.  Last Thursday, some "reporter" named J.K. Dineen provided the latest example when he/she waded into the San Mateo Baywood happenings around getting historic district certification.  The headline screamed "Effort could skirt state housing laws".  Um, no.  The law (SB9) includes exceptions for historic districts and resources.  You aren't "skirting" a law by complying with what it says.

Dineen kicks the piece off with "A stealth effort to have the state legislature designate one of San Mateo's wealthiest neighborhoods as a historic district could create a playbook for other Bay Area enclaves looking to avoid complying".....blah, blah, blah.  It's only a "stealth effort" if one hasn't been paying attention to our local news.  The DJ must have run a dozen articles on the effort and published a couple of dozen LTTEs.  If one's world view generally stops around McLaren Park then it's "stealth".

Note the coded language--"wealthiest neighborhood" and an "enclave" and "genteel subdivision".  Can "leafy suburb" be far behind?  For some reason, searching the Comicle site for a link does not bring up the piece, but here is the front page.  Can B'game be next?  How will they ratchet up the angst when it's H'borough's turn?

No space, no worry...just park it.

We haven't had a bad parking post since July 2022 - not because there hasn't been any bad parking behavior.  Sometimes I see it but don't get the photo and other times it slips my mind due to other more pressing matters.  This bad parking example was noted by the guy who was parked next to me at Safeway.  He was just shaking his head and packing up his groceries.

But hey, if your handicapped space is already taken, just create your own space!  Ignore the cross striping and the No Parking marking.  If it fits, park it.

Downtown: Swing a cat, hit a salon

Just the other day I was thinking what downtown needs is more salons.  Right on schedule, Sola appears to be ready for business on Primrose.  The new Dr. Treats veterinarian next door is still papered over but I have seen work taking place there--and there is certainly demand for more vets in town.  As far as salons go, I do like the name of the one across the street from Sola.  I had not noticed it before, but it's called Skin Laundry.

94010: H'borough/B'game #22 in the country

The Merc did a better job of writing up the recent PropertyShark national rankings of median home prices than the Comicle did, so I will link to it here.  It notes

The Bay Area maintains its status as the most expensive metropolitan area in the U.S.  Bay Area ZIP codes made up 37 of the top 100 most expensive ZIP codes in the country, according to a new 2023 ranking by real estate data firm PropertyShark that looked at median sales prices.

In a quantification of the Doom Loop in EssEff, it notes

San Francisco only had three ZIP codes in the top 100 in 2023, a drop from the 13 it recorded in 2019.

Overall the realtor data shows

Across the nine-county Bay Area, median home prices are up 6.6% from last year, reaching $1.3 million in September, according to data from the California Association of Realtors.

Using median sales prices can be deceiving especially when there is the wider spread of prices from our combined zip code with H'borough than some others like Atherton.  And rising interest rates have locked some people into homes that they would otherwise have sold to move.  Nonetheless, numbers are numbers and ours are:

22   94010   Hillsborough/Burlingame   San Mateo County   CA     $3,200,000

Our neighbor to the south was down the list aways:

62    94402    San Mateo        San Mateo County    CA        $2,203,000

The most interesting real estate development in years happened in court a couple of weeks ago when:

A federal jury ruled on Tuesday that the powerful National Association of Realtors and several large brokerages had conspired to artificially inflate the commissions paid to real estate agents, a decision that could radically alter the home-buying process in the United States.

The realtors’ group and brokerages were ordered to pay damages of nearly $1.8 billion. The verdict allows the court to issue treble damages, which means they could swell to more than $5 billion.

It’s a decision that has the potential to rewrite the entire structure of the real estate industry in the United States, lowering the cost of moving homes by reducing commissions. Under a N.A.R. rule, a home seller is required to pay commissions to the agent representing the buyer, which sellers claimed forced them to pay excessive fees to the agents. The home sellers said the brokerages collaborated with N.A.R. to enforce what is called the “cooperative compensation rule.”

But under the verdict, the sellers would no longer be required to pay their buyers’ agents, and agents would be free to set their own commission rates, which could be slashed in half or less.

For the record, 6% of our median $3.2M sales price is a cool $192,000.  Now that is likely to change over the next few years and after the heavy realtor support for Proposition 19 (the "Death Tax") a lot of people will not be the least upset when it does.  

Dine B'game: The old, the new and the future

It was a big week for Burlingame dining news starting with a nice piece in the Daily Journal about CJ's Deli celebrating 25 years of local sandwich making.  

CJ’s came under new management in 2017 when Gus Kiniris — a longtime restaurateur and manager at community staple Westlake Original Joe’s — purchased the shop from its original owners, the Winters family.  After purchasing the establishment, Kiniris slimmed the menu down to streamline the ordering process — but retained the well-loved staples.

“There were 60 items. Guests would walk in, first-timers … and [get] kind of overwhelmed by the menu,” he said. “So I changed the menu a little while back, dropped it down to about 15 signature items, the top items that have sold over the last 20 years.

And CJ's has been holding the line on prices--$9.99 and $10.99.  That's rare and gratifying to see.  Next up was the opening of Backhaus--not to be confused with someone's ADU.  The first location in San Mateo has been getting rave reviews for some time, and this piece in the DJ describes the addition of the new B'game location last Tuesday.  In addition to baked goods, breakfast will be served on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.  CEO Anne Moser noted

“When we found this space, we decided if we move our pastry team over here, we then have space still for a kitchen to do the sit-down food for people that we want to do, and then our bread team can take over the other location,” Moser said. “So we still bake everything and make everything within our two locations.”

The new storefront building has a long history in the community, originally as Burlingame’s first movie theater, and the Backhaus team is excited to “bring new life to the space” for the Bay Area community.

I have heard the "first movie theater" claim before, but I think it needs more research.  Neither my 1928 nor 1941 city directories list the address, but by 1952 it was The Tropics cocktail lounge.  The Peninsula (later Fox) Theater on the Avenew opened in 1926.  Early in my time in the Bay Area (which started in 1981) the Backhaus building was Route 66 which I really miss.  Here is a fun blast-from-the-past out of the DJ archives.  I'm glad to see it put to good use now.

Continuing on into the future, the talk of a new, upscale restaurant in the partially preserved Old Post Office was confirmed by a press release from the developers, Dostart and Sares Regis, this week. Bacchus Management Group have signed a lease for the historic space that was the classic PO lobby.  Bacchus operates Spruce, Selby's and the Village Pub so expectations are running high for the yet-to-be-named B'game operation.  We are just past two years into construction as noted here.  The lease is for 8,000 square feet, but I was unable to get an estimate of how many indoor and outdoor seats that will translate into.  Rendering are getting better every year--check out how realistic this one is from Dostart!  The marble walls are accurate and notice the outdoor seating!

Water: Newsom pushing uphill finally

Gavin Newsom appears to have finally gotten serious about a bit more reservoir capacity in California.  As we noted back in wet January, some "experts" claim we have already built reservoirs in the most useful spots, but Newsom seems to disagree and is "accelerating" the Sites Reservoir whose Project Authority has been in existence for some time.  Per the Comicle piece

Gov. Gavin Newsom exercised his new power under state law Monday to help get a giant reservoir planned for Northern California on the fast track for approval.  The proposed $4.5 billion Sites Reservoir, envisioned 70 miles north of Sacramento, would be the first major reservoir built in California in nearly half a century.

The reservoir, planned for a swath of ranchlands in rural Colusa and Glenn counties, has long been promoted as a way to significantly boost water storage amid an increasingly uncertain climate.  The reservoir is designed to capture water from the Sacramento River during wet years like this past one and hold up to 1.5 million acre-feet in reserve for dry times — enough for at least 3 million households for a year. The supply would be piped to cities and farms from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. The reservoir would be the state’s eighth largest.

That note about NorCal water going to SoCal is always concerning, but that is the political price to be paid.  The other interesting design feature is

While the water would come from the Sacramento River, the proposed facility is different than most because it would not sit on a waterway. Instead, water from the river would be piped to the “off-stream” site.

So the fish get water first and the reservoir only diverts some when the Sacramento River is flowing well.  It's a plan--lets see if it really starts holding water in 2032.

BSD has a new substitute teacher

In the feelgood story of the month or maybe the whole year, our own Vice Mayor Donna Colson has gone through the process of becoming a "30-day substitute teacher".  Her column in the DJ explains the process so for those who are interested in doing the same I'll post it here for future reference:

To be qualified as a 30-day substitute teacher, you must contact the district in which you would like to work and

• submit your college transcripts as proof of a degree
• apply for a Live Scan fingerprint and background check
• obtain updated tuberculosis screening, and
• pass a brief series of human resources training modules.

The process takes only a few hours to complete, and the district office personnel are incredibly helpful. The credential must be renewed annually. With this certification, one can substitute short term in any school and in any grade in the district.

B'gamers know Councilwoman Colson is a bundle of energy, but stepping into an elementary school substitute teaching role three or four days a month (that's her goal) is next-level energetic.  I recall as a kid the games that were played on subs (by the other kids, of course).  Here's betting that won't happen when Mrs. Colson is in class.  Click through to read the rest of the story.

Green energy: Is wind-power fizzling out?

In a Wall Street Journal article this week titled "Wind-Powered Projects Hit by Rising Costs" we learn that Big Wind is in trouble and backing away from projects.

Some firms have already eaten multimillion-dollar termination fees to pull out of East Coast projects or written down investments because of rising costs, battering clean-energy stocks. Analysts say New York’s attempt to find new price points acceptable to developers, regulators and investors suggests the broader market’s adjustment won’t be easy.  “Does the market have the courage to kind of pay these higher prices for clean energy?” David Hardy, chief executive of energy firm Ørsted Americas, said at a conference in New York last month. 

He added that ratepayers would ultimately be the ones ponying up. “But the question is, like: What’s the alternative?” he said.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  There are alternatives that are cheaper and way more reliable and way more safe for sea life and wild life.  Here are the wind numbers that are rising by the week

The new group of projects comes with a projected strike price—a cost index that helps decide residents’ bills—of $145.07 per megawatt hour of electricity over their yet-to-be-finalized 25-year contracts. According to the state, that is about 28% higher than the older proposals’ average but 13% less than the rate developers collectively requested from regulators.

New York’s new proposals will boost ratepayers’ bills by about 2.7%, or more than $35 a year, for the lifespan of the projects, according to state projections. The expected sum is four times more than what officials estimated when the first round of contracts was struck in 2019.

And then the chickens come home to roost as they always do

Equinor last week told investors it wrote down about $300 million from its New York project, or roughly half of its value. Shares in Ørsted, which has projects off the East Coast, Europe and Taiwan, have plunged nearly 80% since early 2021.  Other developers and suppliers have also taken hits. Shares in Siemens Energy, a key producer of turbines and other equipment, crashed to record lows last week after the company said it was in talks with the German government and banks about guarantees to back long-term projects.  General Electric, meanwhile, said in its earnings results last week that it expects to book about $1 billion in losses from its offshore operations this year and next.

As we await the latest rate increases for PG&E at least California isn't going wind-crazy.  I'm always amazed whenever I drive over the Altamont Pass how many wind turbines are still. 

California Ave: Navigating the maze

You can think something will look bad and it turns out fine--or vice versa.  Now that the reworked lanes on California Ave. are nearing completion the street appears to be a mess.  Never mind that there was nothing wrong to begin with, but now people are finding all of the poorly designed features.  We covered the accident inducing tight left turn at Broadway to go south on California and the Oak Grove situation last month here.   This week I parked briefly at one of the scarce spots on the west side of California to jump out and get a photo.

I swear I did not wait around for 20 minutes to get this photo.  It literally happened right as I walked between two parked cars on the east side (which also seemed more dangerous than before).  Some driver either got confused by a "lane" to his right of the line of parked cars or he just thought why troll for an open spot in a traffic lane when there is the nice "bike lane" available?  Luckily he went by me pretty slowly since there wasn't a lot of room to spare.

With Caltrans closing El Camino for whole days at a time (today "traffic will be diverted onto the 1200 & 1300 blocks of Balboa Avenue and 1500 & 1600 blocks of Sherman Avenue, Easton Drive and Hillside Drive." from 7am to 4pm) you can bet California is seeing some overflow.  The concrete islands that are painted yellow with little reflective signs already have tire marks all over them.  People are figuring out what a mess it is including our emergency personnel.  One has to wonder how to fix this.  In the meantime, everybody be careful out there.

Fake Grass: Millbrae issues a ban worth following

I don't like artificial turf--fake grass.  Never have.  I don't like how it looks or how it wears.  I don't like how hot it gets in direct sunlight when it can burn a dog's paws.  None of that really matters much, BUT gather evidence that it is bad for the environment and political gears start to turn.  Two years ago Millbrae began assessing the damages from fake grass as we noted here.  Back in 2021, some of the stated concerns were:

increased heat, reduced water absorption and toxic runoff from disintegrating plastic.  “That means not only is there no worm or bee activity, you have no runoff capacity, you have no water infiltration capacity, you have no carbon sink that you would have with grass.”  Additionally, artificial turf is 30% to 60% hotter than ambient temperatures on a warm sunny day, Conway said.

Recycling fake turf is probably about as effective as recycling most everything else these days which is to say not very effective as we noted here two and a half years ago.  Now the Millbrae city council has unanimously taken the plunge as reported in the DJ

Millbrae City Council passed an ordinance that bans the installment of artificial turf and synthetic grass and mandates proper maintenance of existing turf if it was installed legally.  “We’re concerned about the health and safety of synthetic materials. There’s plastics, nylon, different kinds of materials in there,” said Community Development Director Andy Mogensen. “And we are concerned with its impact on our stormwater, aquatic life and things of that nature,” he said.

County Supervisor candidate Ann Schneider weighed in with the broader picture

“I strongly believe that there will be legislation coming down federally and state wise that holds cities accountable for microplastics entering waterways, because it's entering into our food system. And then these highly carcinogenic — full of PFAS, or forever chemicals — are getting into our food supply, so it’s a ticking time bomb,” said Mayor Ann Schneider.

I await B'game making the same move.  Millbrae wanted to give people five years to replace it but relented due to homeowner costs.  It doesn't really matter since a lot of it will wear out by then and need to be replaced anyway.  Let's join Millbrae in being responsible!