The Burlingame Voice

Water Security: Nothing to Worry About?

The city council took up the 2020 Urban Water Management Plan last week with the hope of approving this latest five-year update.  We described the stated concerns about shortages that came up during the study session last May here.  Words like "alarming" and "worry" were in vogue back in May, but curiously absent last week as the UWMP was approved 5-0.  I had sent several comments to the council based on my reading of the draft plan where I thought some more work was wise.  We may get to all of them over time, but right now I just want to focus on the main question.  When droughts inevitably come, do we have enough water?  Apparently the various agencies involved think we do as seen in this Table 7-6 from the plan that covers the next 20 years.

These numbers are the SFPUC Regional Water System (RWS) estimates of our city's water availability if the "Save the Fish" maneuver called the Bay Delta Plan doesn't happen.  The "Save the Fish" plan is tied up in court and negotiations, so this looks like great news!  Over the next five years, if we have a dry year our availability drops 19.7% and then stays exactly the same even if the next four years are dry.  Over the long run, things look even better.  20 years from now, if we have a dry year, our availability only drops 12.6% and thankfully stays exactly the same for the next four continuously dry years.  I guess I have been worrying for no reason.  Let's move on.  The day after the council meeting, Wally from Dilbert explained why I feel better.

Growing Season Goes "Pear-shaped"

Right around Labor Day my pears usually ripen--if there are any pears.  It becomes man vs. squirrel.  Recall I had a bountiful crop in 2019.  Then last year was a bit of a bust, but regular contributor HMB noted "Some apple and pear trees/varieties are more likely to be biennial bearers. I have a pear like that.".  Thus I was hoping for another bounty, but alas this year has gone "pear-shaped".  Per Wikipedia, that term may have originated with the U.K Royal Air Force.  In any case, here is the total harvest this year.......the normally reliable Gravenstein apple yield was way down too.

High-Cost Rail- Part 155 CA Legislature Balks at Cost

The LA Times remains on the case regarding the high-cost boondoggle that continues to trudge along in the Central Valley.  In a piece titled Newsom and California lawmakers hit an impasse on financing bullet train the Times notes

A battle to secure an additional $4.2 billion for the California bullet train has hit an impasse, with Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders failing to reach a compromise Friday.

Unless the two sides resume talks soon, any additional money for the bullet train will have to be negotiated in 2022, forcing the rail project to dip further into the roughly $2-billion pot it has in hand....a large coalition in the Assembly wants some of the money diverted to high-speed rail segments in Southern California and the Bay Area.

The negotiations were led by Assembly Transportation Chair Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who has been pressing the bullet train project to improve its performance after a history of cost increases and schedule delays. Friedman has contended for months that there was no reason to give the rail authority the full $4.2-billion appropriation when it wasn’t needed in immediate years.

The legislative dispute could affect the willingness of Congress to provide federal funding for the bullet train out of a $3.5-trillion budget resolution.

One can only hope.  We are at Recall minus nine days.  I believe virtually anyone who would win on Question 2 would immediately put a bullet in the bullet train, including MeetKevin.  I know I would as I noted here.  It would be Day 1.

Broadway Nightlife Returns

Back in the pre-pandemic era, Broadway was slowly starting to have some musical entertainment in the evenings.  We saw Il Piccolo do some events and hoped that more would follow, but Covid shut that down with everything else.  The Par 3 restaurant at the Coyote Point golf course was first to dip their toes in the aural pond as we noted here.  Now the Broadway Grill has established a regular schedule of jazz on Thursdays from 7-9pm, live piano on Fridays and live guitar most Saturdays (5-8pm).

The good news is that the sad little balcony stage that used to house the bands has been abandoned for a nice ground floor space with open windows along Capuchino Ave.  With wide spacing of the indoor tables you can enjoy a much better menu and plenty of elbow room while you eat and listen.  I'm sure the parklet diners were able to enjoy it as well.  The owner, Ziggy Dzikaras, is on the right track and I hope he is very successful.

Here is the San Francisco Quintet with vocalist Darlene Langston doing their thing last night and I hope they become regulars on Thursdays.

Election 2022: County Sheriff

The election for county sheriff is about ten months away (next June 7), so the chatter among the chattering class has started.  Mark Simon at the Daily Journal did a full column on the potential of the race a week ago.  His focus was money and race as seen in these couple of snips:

Even before his 2016 appointment by the Board of Supervisors to replace Greg Munks, who resigned in midterm for health reasons, Bolanos had begun raising money for the 2018 election, when he would appear on the ballot for the first time. He raised more than $100,000 in the first half of 2016. By the end of 2017, his campaign fund had more than $250,000 in cash on hand. In the months leading up to the June 2018 election, he raised another $135,000 and entered the last month of the campaign with more than $225,000 in cash on hand. He spent $212,000 for his election.  He did little fundraising in 2020. But at the start of this year, as the next election neared, he raised more than $150,000. At midyear, he had more than $260,000 in his campaign treasury.

There may be some pride in the Latino community that the county’s top law enforcement official is also Latino, but Bolanos has carefully cultivated an image as serving the entirety of the county’s population. He is credited with effective work in the heavily Latino community of North Fair Oaks, but he is not prominently associated with that community.

That column prompted a letter to the DJ from B'game planning commissioner Ray Larios attempting to "clarify things" including asserting that fundraising equals "desperation" and

Mr. Bolanos indeed has raised a large sum of money. However, Mr. Simon omits that most of his campaign funding comes from private interests, retired judges and consultants who reside outside of our county lines.

I'm not going to bother to pull Bolanos' campaign financial filings for three reasons.  First, even if factual, none of those sources of donations give me cause for concern.  Second, building a war chest for a county race is hardly surprising--we are 766,000 people.  Without some context of say a typical county supervisor's fundraising, spending $200K on a countywide race isn't out of line.  Lastly, if any of the challengers could raise that much cash I am sure they would do it in a heartbeat.  Larios finishes his letter with some serious bloviating 

I leave readers with something to consider. Here is a woman who has risen through the ranks as an exceptional officer, commander and community leader in what has been traditionally a male-dominated career. Chief Corpus works twice as hard as her male counterparts and is not concerned about politics.

Christina Corpus is chief-in-title of the "Police Bureau" in Millbrae because Millbrae was too broke to afford its own police department and had to outsource it to the Sheriff's Department years ago.  Bolanos is the one who has been promoting her.  One wonders how a guy who lives in a different town (ours!) would know who is working twice as hard as everyone else?  It's so ridiculous on its face that it begs the question of whether someone with such poor judgement should be in a position of responsibility on the Burlingame Planning Commission?  With advocates like Larios, Corpus is going to need more than a chunk of cash, her gender and her ethnicity to win in San Mateo County.

At least we have ten months to assess the real issues of how the Sheriff's Department has been performing and what every candidate believes should happen in the future.  Can't happen fast enough.

RIP: Rosalie O'Mahony (1930-2021)

Word of Rosalie O'Mahony's passing last Saturday filtered out to the insiders this week and made it to the Daily Journal front page yesterday.  In the DJ piece Rosalie was remembered as:

More than two decades after beginning her teaching career in the county, O’Mahony set her eyes on city policy, running for a seat on the Burlingame City Council. She won her race in 1989 and went on to serve as mayor five times before exiting the council in 2009.  Those who knew and worked with O’Mahony said she was always a fair and thoughtful policymaker who stood firmly by her decisions.

Current Burlingame Mayor Ann Keighran called O’Mahony the “queen of infrastructure,” and a “trailblazer.”  “She’s one of the few politicians that really made her decisions based on her principles rather than political expediency,” Keighran said. “She would rather fix sewers and balance finances than make any headlines.”

As I pondered her legacy over the last week, a few memories came to mind.  As Mayor Keighran noted, Rosalie paid close attention to the fixed assets of the city which I strongly supported.  She appreciated that the infrastructure was one of the core missions of the city and understood it deeply.  The quote, in her accent, was something like "You need to understand how much of the city is underground."  Her focus on the finances could sometimes cause me to disagree with her such as when she favored merging our police department with nearby cities' to save money.  That idea missed some of the nuance of local control and good local presence.  There were other areas as well and the history makes for interesting reading here.

The most vivid memory was the night of the Council vote on the original Safeway design.  Newcomers to town won't remember the long saga but they can always trip down 74 steps of memory lane in the Safeway category here.  It was a long meeting and each councilmember had invested plenty of time and energy understanding the plans.  Prior comments seemed to indicate 2 for and 2 against; it was anybody's guess how Rosalie would vote.  In the end, she voted against the poorly designed, big box, solid-blank-wall-on-Primrose proposal and Safeway went back to the drawing board with the exceptionally fine results that reflect well on the downtown to this day.

Lastly, there was always something comforting about seeing Rosalie's pale yellow Camaro toodling around town.  I'm guessing it was a '68 or '69 and it hinted of the Rosalie book being a bit different than the cover.  RIP.

A funeral mass, honoring the life of O’Mahony, will be held at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 28, at St. Catherine’s Church. Rather than flowers, her loved ones ask that those interested in giving make donations to the St. Vincent DePaul Society or a charity of choice.

Here she is in 2006 at the annual Christmas tree lighting and parade.

San Mateo County: By the Numbers

The 2020 census data dropped this week and with it we get a view of how our County has been growing and changing.  The Comicle lists the numbers for San Mateo County as shown below; with the Change column added by me because that is what any numerate person would be interested in seeing without having to calculate it themselves.

                                        2010                2020            Change

Population                       718,451            764,442        +45,991

% Age 16+                           77.8%             79.8%           +2.0%

Then there is the constant need to highlight Ethnicity

White                                   42.3%            36.1%            -6.2% 

Hispanic                               25.4%            25%               -0.4%

Black                                    2.6%              1.9%             -0.7%

Asian                                    24.5%            29.8%            +5.3%

Other                                    5.2%              7.2%             +2.0%

Now a bit of analysis.  The ten-year growth in population is 6.4% which equates to a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 0.622%.  That is a little more than half the growth rate of Alameda County (11.4%) and a shade below our southern neighbor Santa Clara County at 8.7%.  I'm not sure I trust the SF County number of 8.5% given the exodus accelerated after the start of the census.

Given that we have the exact same water storage capacity as we had ten years ago, I would have to conclude that any "crisis"-driven move to add lots more high-density housing on top of the massive amount that is already approved and/or being built is misguided.  There is more data to come soon on how much more efficient we are getting in our water usage, but taking 6.4% up to 8.7% or 11.4% without a comprehensive plan is crazy.

Oil and gas for them, but not for us?

"Think globally, act locally" is quite the mantra.  Many local officials in B'game and our neighboring towns appear to take it to heart especially regarding saving the climate.  And then there are the contradictions like this from yesterdays WSJ.  Or dare I say the hypocrisy?  In the immortal words of the grandfather in Moonstruck, "I'm confused".  What is going on here?

Perhaps it is time to repeal the ban on natural gas hook-ups?  After all, shouldn't we take our cue from the White House?

Wildfires and Sacramento Grifters Redux

Back in May I wrote about this year's wildfire response by Sacramento which so far has been to go out for more bond money. Another $5.6 billion is the current ask. It cannot be a surprise that we will have wildfires every year and should actually plan to fight them better. I know Newsom has been busy.  There is a bear running wild all over the state and, of course, plenty of equity issues to resolve.  I feel sorry for CalFire and all of the local units that rush to help them.  We ran a huge budget surplus last year and yet the firefighting resources appear to be about the same.  I don't know how much a few used DC-10s cost, but it cannot be billions.

End result?  A Tahoe Air Quality Index (AQI) of 575.8 last evening around 8pm.  That AQI link states "Think of the AQI as a yardstick that runs from 0 to 500." so I can attest to 575.8 being bad.  Where are all the climate warriors who have time to ban natural gas hook-ups?  Here's the Sierra sun at 6pm.

And before someone yells "climate change", another clear-eyed observer, Bjorn Lomborg, noted this in yesterday's Wall Street Journal

Similarly, climate change is often blamed for wildfires in the U.S., but the reason for them is mostly poor forest management like failing to remove flammable undergrowth and allowing houses to be built in fire-prone areas. Despite breathless climate reporting, in 2021 the burned area to date is the fourth-lowest of the past 11 years. The area that burned in 2020 was only 11% of the area that did in the early 1900s. Contrary to climate clichés, annual global burned area has declined since 1900 and continues to fall.

Here is some related news, but first a snippet of a LTTE to the Daily Journal by one Robert A. Nice that puts it nicely

Editor,

Does all the blame for all the homes and trees lost in the California fires go to PG&E. Did PG&E bring all this power into the woods and then invited people to build around them, no. We as citizens decided we wanted to live in the forest, and we asked PG&E to bring us power and what we didn’t do is oversee this installation. We had planning committees, we had inspectors, we should have seen the potential and planned for a defense against it. Planning and inspecting are both actions that both citizens and power companies are responsible for enacting. I’m not saying PG&E wasn’t part of the blame but we as homeowners also had the responsibility to keep PG&E in compliance.

and then we read in the Daily Post

 

SMUSHD: Suspensions to Proceed, Appeals Likely

Voice readers have had plenty of background on the issues surrounding staff misconduct since two prior Voice threads have followed this issue closely here and before that here.  Actual letters went out on Monday reinforcing the earlier decision to suspend as reported in the Daily Journal today 

The teaching credentials of three San Mateo Union High School District administrators are still in limbo after the governing board responsible for determining the fate of their case declined to reconsider its decision to suspend the officials. 

Dr. Kevin Skelly, district superintendent; Dr. Kirk Black, deputy superintendent of Human Resources and Student Services; and Pamela Duszynski, Mills High School principal; face suspensions of their education credentials due to mismanagement claims brought by a Mills High School teacher.  The Committee on Credentials, the investigative arm of the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing, recommended suspensions of 120 days for Duszynski, 30 days for Skelly and 14 days for Black.

The officials lobbied the governing body to reconsider the recommendations but were sent letters Monday informing them the COC’s decisions would be upheld. Formal suspensions have not been approved at this point, leaving each administrator still credentialed.  

Robert Griffin, president of the San Mateo Union High School District Board of Trustees, reacted to the news in an email statement, sharing disappointment the committee’s chose not to reconsider “its initial erroneous decision.”  The officials still have the opportunity to appeal the suspensions which will be decided through the Attorney General’s Office.

Click through on the DJ link above to read the rest of the story and if you feel like reading up on the disciplinary process from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing it can be found here.  I don't have any special insight on this, but I do wonder if an appeal to the Attorney General might not be the trigger that takes this from an investigation of one series of incidents at Mills to a broader review of SMUSHD events there and elsewhere?  In my experience, which is quite substantial, there is always a "be careful what you ask for" component to personnel issues.

ECR: The Renewal Project Goes off the Rails

This is a tough post for me to write.  That's why it has taken me two weeks to write it since the Caltrans virtual meeting about the El Camino Real Roadway Renewal project on July 14th.  I really want to see some things fixed on ECR as noted here, here here and here.  But sometimes the cure can be worse than the illness and from what I heard, this is one of those times.  The virtual meeting had numerous presenters each with their own piece of the project, but the overarching view was obscured by bureaucracy and over-regulation along with some over-engineering.  We heard about this "once in a generation project" which is an understatement--a generation is 20-30 years--and while the project may take half of that to complete (certainly more than the 2 years stated), we will be living with the results for much longer---if it happens.

Caltrans presented three options:  the No Build alternative, the Roadway rehab without undergrounding the utilities and the Roadway rehab with undergrounding.  At least the horrendous "road diet" option reducing regular users to one lane in each direction with a center turn lane and all sorts of other goodies for people who don't actually drive on ECR is "not viable".  The good news ends there, because once the anti-eucalyptus forces start drooling over the two Roadway rehab options, we are headed for a dramatic changes that will take years to recover.  PG&E and the city council want the utilities underground.  I'm still not sure why when you consider the historic, nationally-registered eucalyptus grove will be a casualty of that move.  The renderings of what a denuded ECR would look like were all "20 years post-build" and even after 20 years still looked like a sad shell of the canopy we have now.  One astute questioner noted that they drive south on ECR every weekday morning and there are several months of the year when the sun is directly in the eyes of drivers.  Only the towering eucs make for a partial sun shield that surely makes for safer driving and pedestrian crossings.  Been there, experienced that.  And it's not just sun blindness--remember this incident?

Given how long it took to take out just one eucalyptus at Howard Ave. a couple years ago (about a week), we could be faced with a year or more of horrific traffic closures as there are 390 of them in the tree rows.  The claim is that only 3% of them are in "good condition".  And yet they go on year after year with minimal incidents.  It seems like selective replacement as we have been doing is better than a wholesale removal and replacement with 7 to 14' trees.

As for the rough sidewalks pushed up by tree roots, one of the Caltrans personnel finally said what I have been thinking for years-- why not just "bridge over slightly raised roots".  It is apparently allowed and would work in the places that are not too bad.  Throw in some serious digging at the 4 or 5 known flooding areas to clear roots and debris and rebuild the drains and you have what I would call a "Light Build alternative".  Public comment can be made at www.ElCaminoRealProject.com until next Monday, August 2nd.  I'm not sure it will do much good at this point, but a light build is all we need.

The Burlingame Voice is Now Legal

Happy 18th birthday to the Voice.  Being 18 years old used to be the adult demarcation--the draft, marriage, legal alcohol purchases and the like.  With the juvenilization of society you could argue that 21 is now the demarcation, but let's go with 18 for now.  As I was thinking about what to highlight that is different from last year's 17th anniversary, I was stumped.  Then I read today's SF Comicle Pink section article about some lame Netflix show that has been in their top-watched list for a week or more.  People are apparently "hate-watching" it.  According to the Pink

“Hate-watching could be seen as an act of active critical viewing — viewers want to actively participate and have a say, rather than simply absorbing,” said Jeffrey Skoller, associate professor at the film and media department at UC Berkeley.  “I think viewers these days are more sophisticated than the media that’s been given to them,” Skoller said. “They understand that certain narrative elements are cliché, and there’s a pleasure in picking up on that.” Camacho adds that while media professionals like herself can give a detailed explanation about why a show doesn’t work, everyday viewers, too, have become adept in finding narratives that “don’t make sense” or spotting directorial decisions that are lazy and annoying.  Unlike the genre of camp, which assumes a degree of irony and self-awareness, hate-watched shows normally take themselves seriously, which only adds to the fun.

That pretty much sums up why I still pay the SF Comicle money to land in my driveway every morning.  It's "hate-reading".  It's fodder for the Voice.  I use critical reading skills rather than simply absorbing their drivel.  More sophisticated than the lightweights writing the drivel?  Check.  Narratives that are cliché?  Check.  Take pleasure in picking up on that (i.e. picking it apart)?  Check.  Finding "narratives that don't make sense"?  Check.  Spotting "directorial decisions" -- meaning editorial decisions -- that don't make sense?  Check.  Lazy and annoying?  Check.  Does the SF Comicle take itself seriously?  Oh my, double check.

There is a lesser amount of that in our local press.  I give the Daily Post a lot of credit in this regard, I just wish they would actually put the paper in the empty blue boxes that have been all over town for years.  The Daily Journal is good too--not as critical when it could be, but good.  In the meantime, visit here for free.  Enjoy it, hate it, laugh at it, think about it.  What evah.