The Burlingame Voice

SMUHSD: Kaufman and Land

For B'gamers the long ballot is short on local issues.  Unlike Millbrae, San Mateo and H'borough, we do not have a city council race, nor do we have any local measures like Y and R in San Mateo.  We do have a race for two seats on the San Mateo United High School District where incumbent Greg Land and two newcomers are running.  Land is well-known in town, has incumbency and has the school administrator credentials that make him a knowledgeable insider.  From where I sit, the race is between Ligia Andrade Zuniga and Neal Kaufman.

Having watched some video from their campaign websites and a good bit of the candidates' forum found here, I found this a pretty easy choice.  Kaufman has a broad perspective and broad experience.  His statement emphasizes his financial background including as Chair of the Citizens' Committee that advocated for the school bond measure that raised $385 million and as a finance professional (his day job).  This is a big district and financial controls can always use improvement.  He also hits right on the need for a school re-opening plan.  Today's Daily Post noted a poll showing distance-learning for kids has recently lost 22% of support among parents.  This is a hot button issue and needs attention--i.e. more pressure than the existing Board has exerted.

We have a number of Voice posts over the last several years about alleged misconduct by BHS school staff and District staff.  I won't get into it here, you can click on the Schools category to the right and read the history--if you have a couple of hours.  Bottom Line:  I think the next new Trustee has to have broad, more hands-on background like I see from Kaufman.  Just one man's opinion, but an informed one. 

Driving range drives bass rather than balls

For the record, I love music. I love live music the best. I’m a concert goer. I also consider myself an amateur musician. That said I have to question how the Burlingame Golf Center became a live concert venue. I question it for several reasons. The first being that here it is the first night of the concert series on the bay front and I can listen to the concert from my house, which is clearly NOT on the bay front. The second question is that I have been involved in organizing concerts in another Peninsula city and I had to jump through hoops to gain the proper permits. The questions on the permits include what is the plan for safety, traffic and lighting but most importantly sound/noise/decibel level, etc. The concerts I refer to had to end at 8pm at the latest so as not to disturb residents or hotel guests in the area. I have to wonder how the hotels are feeling about live and loud concerts next to their hotels. Granted during this time of Covid, the guest count is most likely down, but that doesn’t change the fact that no guest likes to hear construction noise or thumping bass lines all night. The third question is how did they get permission to hold concerts on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights for several weeks in a row? OK, a concert once in a while, perhaps once a week, but practically every night? More questions: I Googled the concert info and could not find any info on what time they are supposed to conclude. Again, it’s after 10pm and I still hear the concerts. At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I think the process is flawed here. A quote from one of the artists as quoted in the SF Chron: “Phillippe is already planning to “make a song that allows the crowd to interact via honking their car horns.” Really?

Caltrain: Will the RR Survive?

Big money has jumped into the Caltrain tax measure RR.  We touched on the saga in May here and December here.  The Daily Post reports that the yes side has raised $1.7 million dollars with recent funds from Google, Adobe, the Giants, Amgen and the usual developers and unions.  The television commercials are running fast and furious and the in-fighting between SF, San Mateo County and Santa Clara County officials has moved off the front page.  But the local letters to the editor are running strongly against handing Caltrain more money.  The bike-rail commuters don't like how the bike cars were set up.  The fiscal hawks can't believe management didn't make cuts during the worst days of Covid sheltering.  And the equality folks complain that the passengers are generally more well-off than the general public so why subsidize them.

All this comes with a backdrop of cost of living/affordability concerns that may make the idea of more sales tax a hard sell.  The late start due to the in-fighting may be enough to sink RR this time around.  What a change from the pre-Covid predictions of growth from 65,000 daily riders in 2018, to 243,000 daily riders in 2040.  If the high-cost rail albatross could be killed and plucked there would be more than enough rail money to go around the whole state.

 

The Ups and Downs of Downtown Parking

Just a couple of blocks separate the largest additions to downtown parking we have seen in more than a generation.  The public lot between Lorton and Highland, just south of Howard is rising briskly while the underground parking at the old Hower Auto lot at Bayswater and Myrtle and the one next to the Dairy Boy mural dive deep into subterranean B'game.  With parklets here to stay, the public lot should prove to be popular even if it is further from the Avenue than most people are accustomed to walking.  The two deep digs for new construction have me scratching my head a bit.  I thought the building code called for only going down as far as the water table, but it looks like that restriction has fallen quietly by the wayside.  It's probably a victim of the extreme pressure for more development- residential and commercial.  When this latest drought is over it will be interesting to see how downtown drainage is affected.

Good Thing Our Town is Named Burlingame

From everything we know now, Anson Burlingame has an exceptional reputation even by 2020's slippery standards.  We noted much of his story here when his bust was unveiled in the library and here when we described how Burlingame, Kansas came to be.  But if we are to listen to the revisionist social justice warriors from SF, our elementary schools need to be changed--lots of them.  It's not clear if the SJWs have spent much time on old Ben Franklin who might be iffy, but Washington, Lincoln, Hoover, McKinley and Roosevelt have to go!  Good thing we don't have a Feinstein Elementary because it too would have to go.

I do wonder who will be the first B'game based SJW to broach the subject and how long it will take.  We have a bit of a breather after SF Mayor London Breed called the idea "offensive" yesterday.  Not the idea of changing, just the idea of changing in the middle of the pandemic.  I give it til the end of the year here in B'game.  So much for the idea of "teachable moments".  Better to cancel than educate.

Historical Reference: The Corner Smoke Shop

There are days when I really miss certain B'game establishments.  La Pinata.  Route 66.  The record store on Hatch Ln.  Yianni's--but we have a new Greek restaurant moving in where the Nachoria was!!  Of course, the Bit of England.  Towle's.  The Burlingame Drive-in--don't we need that now instead of a big office building that might never get occupied?  Like 220 California--a dead weight on our downtown.

Today I am really missing the Smoke Shop on the Avenew.  I miss Fred telling me what the real name of the place was, but I just have to stick with the Smoke Shop.  I know the remaining partners run the cigar shop, and I thank them for that, but you could walk into the Smoke Shop and buy newspapers from around the world.  You want the three main London papers?  They had 'em.  Safeway has the pink FT somedays, but not the others.  You want the Singapore Straits Times, they had it.  Yesterday I wanted the New York Post, but did not know where to buy it.  If the twits at Twitter and the fakes at Facebook don't want me to read something, well, that just makes me want to read it even more.  Good luck with the censorship.  It hasn't worked since Ben Franklin bought his first printing press and it won't work now.

Columbus Day Thoughts

I just hung out my Italian flag to honor Columbus Day today.  In view of what South San Francisco's city council did back on Aug. 26th cancelling the observance of the day, I wanted to register my protest on my porch and on the Voice.  There is a famous arm movement used by Italian drivers, especially in Rome, that applies here in my opinion.  But let's just review some of the history that myopic public officials are trying to cancel.  From today's Wall Street Journal piece by Alessandra Bocchi

Columbus Day became a national holiday in the U.S. in 1968 thanks in part to the lobbying efforts of Italian-Americans.  Italian immigrants, most of whom came from Naples and Sicily, faced severe discrimination in the 19th century. “They were heavily exploited, and in some instances they were paid less than ‘white’ and ‘colored’ labor—for instance in the work on New York’s Croton Reservoir,” says Seton Hall historian William Connell, author of “The Routledge History of Italian Americans.”

That wasn’t the worst of it. In 1899 the New York Sun described the “unwritten law of the south,” under which “white men could not be lynched—with the exception of the Italian.” Italian-Americans were the target of the biggest lynching in American history, in New Orleans in 1891. After the police chief of New Orleans was shot, hundreds of Sicilian immigrants were rounded up without cause, and nine were tried for murder. The jury acquitted them, but Mayor Joseph A. Shakespeare organized a mob of between 8,000 and 20,000, which stormed the prison and murdered the nine men and two other Sicilians who were held for unrelated charges.

A future president was among those cheering on the mob. “Personally I think it rather a good thing,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his sister. The New York Times editorialized: “These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins . . . are to us a pest without mitigations.”

In 1925 the Ku Klux Klan opposed an effort to erect a statue of Columbus in Richmond, Va. The Klan lost the argument, and the monument was dedicated in December 1927.

So the South San Francisco council stands with the KKK and numerous other racists.  Frankly the ones who voted to do this should resign in disgrace.  They probably wouldn't try to drive to the East Bay without GPS and Waze never mind get in a little ship and sail to the end of the earth where common belief said they would fall off.  Basta.

Cruising El Camino Real: San Mateo

Although I am a member of the Bay Area Cruise Night Facebook group, I did not realize last night was on the event schedule.  We happened to go to All Spice for dinner (highly recommended) and could hear plenty of muscle cars on ECR as we ate in the back parking lot.  After dinner we joined the parade for one circuit and it was fabulous!  It felt like about 1972.  Bel Airs, El Caminos, GTOs, Falcons, vintage pick-ups and a gorgeous California Special Mustang.  I couldn't get a pic of the Special, but I did capture this sparkly ride.  Could not help but think there were more than a few people out last night who would like to show the Gavinor where their tail pipes are.

The Facebook page sponsor thanked SMPD for being out there and helpful.  They set up shop in front of the Safeway and drew a supportive crowd.  Maybe B'game's stretch of ECR will be next.

The Changing Face of B'game

Today's Daily Post front page headline is "Neighborhoods under pressure".  It discusses the impending doom facing single-family housing in the state if Scott Weiner and others in Sacramento get their way with our neighborhoods.  It's almost too depressing to ponder.  But one of the things we do here at the Voice is capture B'game history as it is being made.  Here it won't drift off into forgotten oblivion like many social media sites.

The two classic B'game "cottages" at the corner of California and Oak Grove have been in the news over the years as the long-time tenants got support from national personality Tony Robbins in an effort to stay put.  They're both gone and yet the little bungalows from a time gone by are still here--for awhile.  Right next door is where the action is since another big development has been approved as a "live/work" space.  The Daily Journal initially had the site listed incorrectly as the site of the two cottages, but has corrected the piece and noted the correction here.

The Burlingame Planning Commission unanimously approved Monday, Sept. 28, plans to build 25 units in a live-work development at 601 California Drive.  For the development on California Drive, officials praised the five-story building intended to grant people a place to live and work under the same roof — a departure from the previous discussion, in which officials were unimpressed.  Live/work developments are designed to offer tenants a place to both run a business and make their home in the same unit. Burlingame officials have promoted the development of such projects since updating the general plan to encourage creative land use.

When you look at the proposal, it's not obvious why this is a "live/work" development.  It's got a conference room and a gym, but other than that it just looks like a stack of multi-bedroom units.  You might think there would be ground floor professional space, art gallery space or even room for yet another nail salon, but nope.  That's probably OK since it is a street ripe for higher density.  We will just have to wait and see what happens to the two little houses that have stood on that corner for so long.  Here they are; so they aren't forgotten.

 

Pandemic Politics?

Having tracked the coronavirus spread in San Mateo County on a weekly basis here, I can say the basic trend is a straight line since July.  You can see it graphically as well here.  The fundamentals in our County from last Saturday are:

Cases: 9843 (up 321 this week, so a definite slowdown) - it was running about +450 for awhile

R-eff: .94 (magically dropping a little)

Positivity: 5.7% (exactly flat)

Burlingame Cases: 223 (up 8 for the week)

The County moved into the Red "substantial" tier bring modest reopening including playgrounds (as soon as the city gets signage in place), churches and gyms with tight attendance limits, etc.  So what is next?  According to the Chronicle, we will now need to have "racial equity" in order for small businesses and other endangered enterprises to get the go-ahead that comes with the orange "moderate" tier.

California public health officials Wednesday evening revealed the final metric that counties must meet before they can further reopen their economies. It’s a complicated marker meant to ensure that communities of color no longer bear the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic.  The new metric requires each county to ensure that positive test rates in its most disadvantaged neighborhoods do not significantly lag behind the county’s overall positive rate. In order for a county to move to a less-restrictive tier, the disadvantaged neighborhoods — measured by a variety of social, health and economic factors — must come within 5% of the positive test rate required for that tier.

For example: Most of the Bay Area is in the red tier, and to advance to the less-restrictive orange tier requires a positive test rate between 2% and 4.9%. Under the new metric, each county must also prove that the positive test rate for its most disadvantaged neighborhoods is 5.2% or less.

Not only do we have to somehow shave at least .8% off of the positivity rate that has been stable for a long time, but we also have to do something special in the hotspots.  I pulled the Healthy Places Index (HPI) off the state site and there are 157 census tracts in our county.  Only 4 appear to be in the 4th quintile and none in the bottom.  You have to wonder if this latest move is really the most holistically healthy for everyone and every business--and school-- in the county?  Here's the position of one of the experts

Dr. Bela Matyas, the Solano County health officer, said he had misgivings about the new metric, which he argued would not help counties fix decades of systemic health disparities that are to blame for the disproportionate spread of the virus in this pandemic. He added that the equity metric was hotly contested by many county health officers while state officials tried to work out the details.

“It’s an absurd ask. The metric has nothing to do with things over which we have control,” Matyas said Wednesday. “I am 100% behind trying to achieve health equity, but it’s got to be done in a way that makes sense. Having said that, there was a lot of pushback (from health officers) and what they ended up with is a lot more innocuous than what it could have been.”

So if you are trying to restart a small retail business that doesn't get a parklet or trying to get some of your expensive indoor restaurant space generating revenue, you are faced with the "absurd".

Update: Adding even more absurdity to the mix, check this out!

Willie Brown on Mail-in Ballots

Chronicle columnist and former SF Mayor and Speaker Willie Brown bills himself as a pragmatic politician and I mostly agree.  I also like pragmatism--a lot.  So when Willie goes against his natural partisan leanings it's refreshing and enlightening.  With election day approaching and a number of important measures on the ballot, here's what he had to say on Sunday:

Most states require voters to ask for mail ballots, which is how California used to do it. That way, they know a real person is reaching out.  The way it’s working in California this year, however, every active voter on the state rolls will be sent a ballot. No request required.   What much of the public does not know is that it’s very hard to strike someone from the voter rolls. The rule is, if someone misses two consecutive federal general elections — a presidential election and a midterm — and then misses two more after failing to respond to a mailed query from county registrars, they’re supposed to be tossed off the rolls.

So, you can be gone from your registered address — or dead — for a long time before the state gets around to erasing you. Some estimates say that up to 10% of California’s 20 million registered voters aren’t where the state thinks they are.  Nonetheless, ballots will be going to their listed addresses. So some people who have moved won’t get ballots. Residents at the old addresses will get ballots for people who are no longer living there or are no longer living, period.

With the COVID exodus from the big and not-so-big cities, that 10% estimate may be more like 15% or more right now.  If that concern is a "cockamamie voter fraud conspiracy" to use Willie's term, so be it.  But if some of the local races or measure are real close, the recount and challenges could take awhile.

Au Revoir, City Attorney

The Daily Journal did a quick little blurb on B'game city attorney Kathleen Kane moving on to a new role with MTC-ABAG.  I want to add some context since many people do not realize how important the city attorney is to city operations.  The city council and staff are constantly faced with decisions that have legal implications and municipal law is perhaps more convoluted than "regular" law.  I'm not an attorney--that is just my observation from interacting with past attorneys Larry Anderson and Gus Guinan as well as a little with Kathleen Kane.  Having a steady hand in the attorney's chair is key to balancing lawyers' predisposition towards protectiveness and not going overboard with too much care.

We have benefited from seven years of Kathleen's experience.  As she departs, I hope that having spent so much time guiding our city council in trying to implement some of ABAG's overly aggressive development ideas without ruining our quality of life will allow her to guide ABAG to a better understanding.  She's had a good run here and I wish her well.