The Burlingame Voice

Crosseyed in the Crosswalk

I enjoy receiving interesting comments and especially photos from intrepid local observers.  This gem came in during the week and has me wondering what the BHS students will do?  It's a classic in the "Streets of Burlingame" category!  Keep 'em coming.

 

End of an Era: Our Shrinking County

Let's go to the data to see how the "housing crisis" is coming along.  From the SF Comicle

San Francisco, and the entire Bay Area, lost population during the second year of the pandemic, and California’s population continued to fall for the third year in a row, according to state estimates released Thursday. California’s population declined 0.54% to 39 million people, a loss of over 210,000 people.  The nine-county Bay Area saw some of the steepest population declines in the state — ranging from Napa’s loss of about 1,800 people to Santa Clara’s loss of over 16,500 people, second only to Los Angeles County’s 113,000-person plunge in the state.

San Francisco lost about 8,700 people to net domestic migration; San Mateo lost 12,700 people; Contra Costa County lost 16,400 people; and Alameda lost 27,300. Santa Clara County, the Bay Area’s most populous county, lost 30,900 people to net domestic migration.  That trend reflected many companies allowing workers to stay remote, along with concerns over affordability, said Walter Schwarm, chief demographer at the California Department of Finance, which released the report.

Schwarm expects California population growth to turn positive in the next few years, as immigration rises and the wave of people leaving slows from pandemic-level peaks, but he is doubtful it will return to the more than 1% growth rates seen in the last century.

“The era of large growth for California is probably over,” Schwarm said.

There you have it.  If you click through to the Comicle site, the graph will show San Mateo County was the third largest percentage loser in the Bay Area at -1.1%.  Now will someone revise the RHNA numbers, please?  Also, have you noticed there are more major home remodeling projects in town that have ground to a halt--and some new construction as well?

Global Warming Warning..or Not?

Watching the political gyrations around gas stoves and the news that China's population declined last year, reminded me of an article I picked up on a recent trip to Maui that is worth dissecting.  It was by the main Associated Press climate writer Seth Borenstein, but I won't pin the headline on him since I bet AP headlines are written by a different person -- or maybe ChatGPT?  The headline reads "Study:  Two-thirds of glaciers on track to disappear by 2100".  The first five paragraphs boil down to this:

The study in Thursday's journal Science examined all of the globe's 215,000 land-based glaciers - not counting those ice sheets in Greenland and Antartica - in a more comprehensive way than past studies.  The world is now on track for a 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit temperature rise  since pre-industrial times, which by the year 2100 means losing 32 percent of the world's glacier mass.

That's where things got sticky for me. 32 percent isn't two-thirds.  The lead author is a Carnegie-Mellon prof named David Rounce.  You have to go down 10 more paragraphs that are mostly about sea-level rise to read:

The Columbia Glacier in Alaska had 216 billion tons of ice in 2015, but with just a few more tenths of a degree warming, Rounce calculated it will be half that size.  If there's 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit of warming since pre-industrial times, an unlikely worst-case scenario, it will lose two-thirds of its mass, he said.

I always go back to Steven E. Koonin's book Unsettled for a bit of context.  He described the four IPCC scenarios of warming called RCPs - Representative Concentration Pathways meant to "span a plausible range of possibilities for population, economy, technology, and so on" (p. 71).  They are RCP 2.6, 4.5, 5.0 and 8.5.  The last one is the doomsday scenario, but it is falling apart as we speak as you can read here:

“The IPCC concedes what many have contended all along by admitting ‘the likelihood of high emissions scenarios such as RCP8.5 . . . is considered low.’ Indeed, emissions in 2050 in the International Energy Agency’s current and stated policies scenarios are less than half the quantities projected by RCP8.5. The IPCC also tacitly acknowledges RCP8.5 no longer qualifies as a ‘no policy’ scenario since the vast majority of countries have climate policies.

“And yet, IPCC references RCP8.5 (and an equivalent emission scenario called SSP5-8.5) 1,359 times–more often than any other scenario. Maybe that’s why the IPCC declines to assess the ‘feasibility or likelihood’ of ‘individual scenarios’—otherwise RCP8.5 would be banished from the report!

In the news business and in the headline writing business in particular, if it bleeds it leads.  We need to be careful about taking an incredibly complex topic and boiling it down to a headline that even the article it heads doesn't think is likely; even if you have to wade through 15 paragraphs to find that out.

When you read in the DJ about R&D building projects on the Burlingame bayfront getting exemptions from the no-gas code perhaps you can now relax a bit

The City Council approved an amendment to its energy reach codes, during its meeting on Wednesday, which allows exemptions for projects planned for the city’s Bayfront before 2023 and considers exceptions for future development.

Or maybe you just wonder about how you get one?

Crime numbers in review: 2022

BPD rolls up the prior year in local crime each January and we dutifully report it to you.  All in all, it appears that 2022 was pretty much the same as the last couple of years with the exception of catalytic converter thefts which are on a steep trajectory upwards.  We touched on the topic in March here.  In the comments on that post, you can read about CATGUARD.  I'll check on whether B'game is thinking about it like San Mateo and update this.

My guess is porch pirate thefts are seriously underreported to BPD.  Just looking at the Ring camera footage from nearby neighborhoods, two per month seems low.  Remember that all of these numbers are monthly - so we had 36 residential burglaries reported in 2022, 288 stolen vehicles, and so on down the list.

Monthly Average                        2016    2017    2018    2019      2020    2021    2022

Residential Burglaries                   5        2            3        3          2            2        3

Vehicle Burglaries                      23      25        21       39         20         25       24

     Thefts from Unlocked Vehicles                              -          14            8        5

Commercial Burglaries                  9      4            5        4            6            5        5

     Construction site theft                                             -           1            1        1

     Package thefts                                                        -            4            2        2

Other Thefts                               60      51        56        61          -             -        -

Catalytic Converter Theft                                                          6            9        11

Robberies                                    1        1          1         2           2             2        1       

Stolen Vehicles                            9         6        4            6         9             7        8

Vandalism                                  13    13          11       12          13           13        13

 

Not reported in these statistics is the traffic enforcement trends.  Purely anecdotally, as noted here, we need more traffic enforcement.  Watching people speed up 40 yards from a yellow light and blast through the red is a daily occurrence.  I would love to see BPD be funded to add at least two more officers dedicated to this.  

What civic leadership on SB9 looks like

I was struck by the Daily Post headline shown below.  The Post columnists have been talking about the various cities in SoCal that are standing up to Sacramento on SB9--and standing up for their residents, but this is the first "news" piece I have seen from them or any other paper.  Good on 'em.  Redondo Beach, Carson, Torrance and Whittier--none of which I could find on a map if asked--filed a lawsuit against the state and AG Rob Bonta in March.  Deeper into the article we learn that

In June, the cities of Lakewood and Rancho Palos Verdes announced they had filed their own SB9 lawsuit which is similar to that filed by Redondo Beach.  The difference is that Lakewood and Redondo Beach are general law rather than charter cities, leading to slightly different legal arguments.

Double good on them.  B'game is also a general law city as noted on the city website:

The City of Burlingame was incorporated in 1908. As a General Law city, Burlingame is subject to the general laws of the State of California. The State Government code is the fundamental law of the City, specifying the powers and the form of government that will put these powers into service. This is different from a Charter City, which has more control over local municipal affairs. Charter provisions covering municipal affairs prevail over the State laws when the two are in conflict.

I would love to see B'game link up with Lakewood and RPV (which I can find on a map).  We may be at a slight disadvantage being a general law city, but there is Strength in Numbers.  It seems like a lot more important issue than some of what passes for a city council agenda.  That's what leadership looks like.

Natural Gas: Follow the science?

We must take note of the national kerfuffle about gas stoves that has been boiling over this week.  It's totally pertinent to B'game because our last city council bought into the climate hype and instituted a "reach code" such that new construction can't have any natural gas--not just stoves, but water heaters, furnaces, and barbeques.  No gas for you!  Now the Feds are making similar noises and then backtracking as the WSJ notes

A Biden appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission explicitly threatened to ban gas stoves based on dubious evidence of public-health harm. “This is a hidden hazard,” said commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”  After withering public criticism, including by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the CPSC Chairman denied any plan to ban, and the White House said President Biden also doesn’t want to ban gas stoves. But that’s cold comfort given that the climate left does want to ban them, and progressive cities and states are doing it.

One might ask what is the science behind gas phobia?  Well, today the SF Chronicle actually let a letter to the editor slip through that is pretty clear on the science:

There has lately been a lot of concern about gas ranges and how they can harm indoor air quality, but some of this is too fast and too furious.  As an active researcher in indoor air quality, there can be no doubt that gas cooking produces nitrogen dioxide and that this is bad for respiratory health but the level of concern is far higher than the data show the situation actually warrants. 

Cooking is likely the most polluting thing done in homes. It produces lots of contaminants, regardless of the heat source. Switching to electric may not make the sum total significantly better.  The solution that works regardless of the type of cooking is using your range hood when cooking. Range hoods have been required in California for a long time. Studies have not shown that there would be any significant difference in net harm between gas and electric cooking if you actually use range hoods when cooking.

Max Sherman, retired senior scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

I'll bet if you were one of the 2.4 million PG&E customers that lost power over the last two weeks you were thankful you had a gas stove and some matches even if your range hood or downdraft vent didn't work.  Open a window and enjoy a cup of tea or a bowl of soup.

PG&E: Holding the line so far

I really hope that I am not jinxing things by posting this a couple days before the last of this round of storms plays out.  I have four sump pumps going so I am really hoping....

So far PG&E in south B'game has been solid.  If you told me two weeks ago that we would get the weather and wind we got and the power would stay on the whole time, I would have bet you a C-note that it would not.  In my neighborhood, I would have lost that bet.  This little squib in today's Chron reminded mm how lucky we have been:

All-Pro tight end George Kittle tweeted Thursday night that he had been without power “going on 4 days” — making him one of tens of thousands of Californians still without power due to the recent storms.  “A lil help would be appreciated thanks. Just trying to prepare for something this weekend,” Kittle tweeted at Pacific Gas & Electric Co., alluding to Saturday’s game.

PG&E responded gamely but unspecifically, saying: “We’ve got our offense, defense and special teams on this, George! We’ve got the power back for 2.4M people through the past two weeks’ storms, and we’re gonna get you (and everyone else still out) back as soon as we can!”

The bolded bit is mine.  We had a big tree go down and take out some wires right near St. Paul's Church and I'm sure PG&E had to hustle.  But so far, they are pulling it off.  That correlates with a couple of other good experiences I have had with PG&E over the last year.  Blown transformer, frayed drop wire, etc all fixed in a reasonable amount of time.  EssEff may want to buy PG&E out of their distribution network in the city and run it themselves--which is just hilarious.  Not me, not in B'game.  If you have ever had a job in "operations" where things have to get done regardless of the circumstances, I think you will agree.

Fingers still crossed.

Update:  Jan 19.   Last night's storm which seemed to deliver more rain than predicted appears to be the last one for awhile.  Here's a photo to commemorate the deluge on the Ave.

Water, water everywhere: Except in a bigger reservoir

We must save this missive from the County, the City of San Mateo, the Town of Hillsborough and the SFPUC for posterity.  The obvious question is how far into posterity will we get before this gem comes back to haunt us, our lawns, our gardens, our trees, etc.  The bolded text is my addition

Local agencies are working closely with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on monitoring the impacts of the storm on the San Mateo Creek and preparing for the incoming rains next week. On Friday and Saturday of this weekend, residents along the creek may notice increased flow as the SFPUC conducts controlled releases of the Crystal Springs Reservoir to prepare for the next series of storms. Flooding is not expected this weekend and we are tracking the incoming storm.

The SFPUC owns and operates the Crystal Springs Reservoir system on the Peninsula, which includes Lower Crystal Springs Dam on San Mateo Creek. This reservoir is a key source of drinking water for the San Francisco Peninsula and not a flood control facility. As part of SFPUC’s prudent reservoir operations, operators will need to conduct controlled releases of water out of Lower Crystal Springs Dam into San Mateo Creek to create space for expected rain inflow. These releases are planned with consideration of current rain and high tides to minimize impacts to San Mateo Creek. The goal of these releases is to reduce the potential for reservoir spillover during periods of extreme storms. 

Through the weekend of January 7, water levels in Crystal Springs Reservoir are not expected to reach the dam spillway. However, during the week of January 9, there is currently an approximately 25% chance that water may reach the dam’s spillway during one of the succeeding storm events. In such cases of extreme weather that is outside of our control, water flowing into the reservoir would flow out of the reservoir via the dam’s spillway, which would increase flows in San Mateo Creek. Visit SFPUC’s web page at www.sfpuc.org/PeninsulaReservoirWetWeather for more information and updates.

Remember back in June when we went to Stage 2 water restrictions?  Now the water is headed out to the Bay.  Recall also when Dr. Newsha Ajami, Director of Urban Water Policy, Stanford's Water in the West Program noted the state "has already built reservoirs where they work best" and that we should be transitioning to groundwater storage going forward?  Can't come one water year too soon, but is anyone actually working on it or are we just focused on "sea-level rise" and the parcel taxes needed to pay for the walls?

Update 1/16:  I seldom watch TV news but this came on right after the football game and I had been hoping to find a photo of the Hwy 92 sink hole.  Here it is

A Small Man in a Big Office

The political hack at the SF Comicle sucked me in with the on-line teaser about Newsom talking about "small men in big offices".  I had higher aspirations for a New Year's Voice post, but I got sucked in by Joe Garofoli's hyperbole.  Joe G. is the epitome of a In-the-tank Chronicle columnist.  He has no shame insight.  Boy, do I miss Willie Brown.  So here are just a few of Gavin's misses courtesy of Joe G.:

Newsom:  “I’ve been thinking a lot about time,” Newsom said to open his 21-minute speech. “Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s being a parent. But time is now on my mind.”

Did he not see the 50,000 jokes about Kamala Harris and "the passage of time"?  The dude is 55.  His speech writer must be 30.  Garofoli calls him "the guy in charge of the world’s fourth-largest economy — a place he calls the “nation-state” of California."  This year the only thing he might be "in charge of" is the nation's largest deficit.  Want to make a name for yourself?  Go find the $30 billion dollars of taxpayer money that you let the EDD send to fraudsters.  THAT would be like "being in charge" and might balance the budget.

Challenges?  Garofoli notes

And there’s a lot to do in a state where 161,000 people are unhoused, wealth inequality is vast, the poverty rate is high, housing is unaffordable and less than half of students are proficient in reading.

Newsom couldn't "house" the "unhoused" when he was the mayor of EssEff.  What makes anyone thing he can do anything productive across the whole state except threaten local governments' payments?  And "wealth inequality"?  Really Joe G.?--Newsom better hope the wealth inequality holds firm for the rest of his term since that is what is payin' the bills.  Here's the kicker:

“In our finest hours, California has been freedom’s force multiplier, protecting liberty from a rising tide of oppression taking root in statehouses — weakness, masquerading as strength. Small men in big offices.”

I take it back.  His speechwriter must be 23.  California lost 343,000 people to net out domestic migration in the last year and the states he is trying fruitlessly to demonize accepted most of them.  Not that I think that is a problem.  I'd be happy to see California "lose" another million or two so maybe our second-rate politicians could get a handle on the problems we have now.  Not holding my breath.  Happy New Year.  Stay dry and save some of the rainwater because we are gonna need it.

NYE Deluge: Floating down the Avenew

The Pineapple Express arrived right on time to make a mess of New Year's Eve.  I only ventured onto El Camino once yesterday and it was before the stuff really hit the fan.  My mother-in-law drove on it later and a splash from an adjacent car knocked her windshield wiper right off the car!  But we know ECR is a drainage disaster.  What about the Ave?  It seems the deluge combined with a king tide that was expected, per the Chron

The tides will be at their most extreme on Friday when the high tide of 7.12 feet will arrive at 10:24 a.m. and the low tide will dip to -1.74 feet at 5:26 p.m. — a sea change of nearly 9 feet in about seven hours. Saturday’s high tide rolls in at 11:14 a.m. at 7.09 feet with a low tide of -1.77 feet at 6:15 p.m. A high tide of 6.88 feet will appear at 12:06 p.m. on Sunday.

The king tide combined with the National Weather Service measurements shows the magnitude and also that this isn't a 100-year flood--more like a 30-year flood.

Our San Francisco Downtown site hit 5.46” in the 24 hours of December 31st. This makes it the second wettest day in the 170+ years of records at that site, just 0.08” less than 1st place (11/5/1994) with 5.54”.

It also highlights a design challenge with the seawall that is being proposed for sea-level rise.  Keeping Bay waters out is one thing.  Letting rainfall out is quite another.  Friday's king tide was a shade bigger, but not until the deluge came on Saturday did we have this problem:

I hope this video plays for everyone.

Download Flood vid 123122

Update Jan 5th.  Here is the downed Euc on the Caltrain tracks that PSA noted in the comments.  Thanks to the intrepid photog who captured it for me.

Favorite Post of 2022....and 2021

Let's close out the year with a quick look back at my favorite post of the year.  I was thinking it would be Planning for a Rollicking Rollins Rd.  We heard a lot this year about how proud the city council is of the "new neighborhood" going up in the East-East side--not to be confused with the regular East side that is demarcated by the railroad tracks and the North Park apartments.  The East-East side is also demarcated by the tracks but is north of Broadway and is newly residential.  The Rollicking post was a fantasy of mine that imagined all the things that need to be done for it to really be a "new neighborhood" actually had been done.  But it can't be my favorite for 2022 since it is dated December 26, 2021.  Let's call it my defered favorite of '21.  Check it out.

That leaves State Auditor: Housing "requirement" numbers way off from May 6th as my 2022 favorite.  It is the post that I find myself bringing up in conversations with all sorts of people.  The three paragraphs I excerpted in the post are damning of the whole process of assigning crazy high numbers of you-must-build-units from the state.  Tom Elias as the Daily Post is on a similar page as me.  His column on Wednesday noted that

Several cities have begun to fight parts of today's state domination of land use.  Four Los Angeles County cities -- Redondo Beach, Torrance, Carson and Whittier -- are seeking a court order negating the 2021 Senate Bill 9, which allows single family homes to be replaced by as many as six units, with cities unable to nix any such projects....No one can predict whether or not courts will find the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have vastly overreached in their power grab, which is all for the sake of increased density and based on unfounded predictions by bureaucrats who answer to no one.

Bingo.  Wouldn't it be nice if those four cities got some help?  And in other news, California led the nation in net domestic out migration from July 2021 to July 2022 at -343,230.  That's about like all of Stockton getting up and moving out of state.  New York came in second but is the highest per capita.  Either way, the State Auditor is onto something and should get more airtime in 2023.  Happy New Year.

 

BSD: Where's Johnny today?

Things are a mess in our education system nationwide.  Today's WSJ has a Stanfoo economist estimating that missed learning in K-12 from lockdowns will cost the typical kid $70K in lifetime earnings.  Yikes.  Closer to home the story is not much better.  The Daily Journal has a piece that compares absenteeism rates around the County and while Burlingame is "better than average", things are still not good.

A higher number of San Mateo County students were chronically absent from school in the 2021-22 school year compared to years prior, according to newly released state data, revealing the sustained effects of the pandemic on public education.  At the state level, about 30% of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10% of the school year. Students from most ethnic and challenging socioeconomic backgrounds experienced even higher rates of absenteeism.

The new interim B'game superintendent, on the job for two weeks as noted here, has some comments

Burlingame and San Carlos school districts fell into the medium category, San Carlos with an absentee rate of 5.7% and Burlingame with a rate of 9.2%.  Recognizing the challenges of providing a robust education to students who are under more pressure to stay home when sick, Marla Silversmith, Burlingame School District interim superintendent, said her staff worked hard to connect students with their classwork while remote, whether through paper packages or online platforms.

Students who did complete the work were given attendance credit, helping to reduce the district’s absentee rate. Just more than 9% of students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year, about 4% greater than the 2018-2019 figures.

I put "better than average" in quotes because having about 10% of all kids miss 10+% of school seems like a dire situation to me.  In a 180-school-day year, that's missing three and a half weeks or more!  San Mateo-Foster City, San Bruno Park, South San Francisco Unified and Redwood City were all above 20% -- or missing at least seven weeks of school!  Maybe instead of 87,000 new IRS agents, we should hire 87,000 new truant officers?