The Burlingame Voice

Beyond Burlingame

Another worthy event to be held next month "pretty close to Burlingame:"

A Special Peace Corp Event for Prospective Volunteers Age 50 & Above
Tuesday, July 17th 6 to 8 p.m.
San Mateo Main Library, Oak Room
55 West 3rd Avenue, San Mateo, CA 94402

More information at www.peacecorps.gov

- Written by Joanne

SMUHSD - Budget

Sound budget keeps supportive parents on board (full article in Daily Journal)

With an approved balanced budget for the upcoming school year in place, parents in the San Mateo Union High School District are gearing up to raise money and volunteer to pick up what still isn't in the budget. A budget that restores the 3 percent reserve but reduces bus drivers and routes was approved Wednesday. The vote came after the announcement of an additional $150,000 savings next year thanks to administration moves. The $91 million budget is $2.3 million less than the previous school year, which accounts for the estimated $2.75 million reserve. It does not, however, restore anything cut during the previous year, leaving parent groups preparing early to meet the needs of teachers and students next year.

... The Burlingame Parents Group opted not to fund the librarian position next year which it did pick up after last year's cuts. It is helping to fund the academic center, which acts as a tutoring center, the career center and an extra stipend for a counselor who is working with Latino students, said outgoing president Connie Puccetti.


...An additional savings will come from not filling the open assistant superintendent of instruction position left open when Mark Avelar retired in December. Avelar will come back part-time for the first semester. Burlingame High Principal Matt Biggar will become the interim assistant superintendent in January while maintaining his role as principal. The arrangement will save the district $150,000, said Interim Superintendent David Miller. It will cost us $45,000 for what would normally cost $200,000. We're going to save money and show the administration is willing to share the burden,? he said.

- Written by Fiona

For the Brown Act Junkies

E-mail leads to Brown Act concerns (Daily journal)

The increasing use of e-mail communication between elected and appointed officials might create pitfalls such as the appearance members of the same body are violating the Brown Act by conducting public business in a private arena, according to a new San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury report. The Brown Act, California's open meeting law, prohibits the majority of a legislative body from gathering at the same time and place to discuss or decide any matter. Violators can be prosecuted or otherwise sanctioned.

The grand jury investigation didn't turn up proof any San Mateo County officials met inappropriately but stated in its report that electronic communication can create an appearance of an illegal serial meeting.?The preponderance of e-mail with attachments also opens the cities and counties to full public disclosure under the Public Records Act, according to the grand jury. The act, the jury found, can constitute a significant burden on staff time, document copies and legal costs to determine which records apply. Part of the challenge, too, is sorting official business from any personal communication sent from the same e-mail account.

During county budget hearings earlier this week, County Counsel Tom Casey touched on the sometimes-onerous task of responding to a growing number of Freedom of Information Acts from the press and general public. The jury recommends every city council issue official e-mail accounts to members, adopt policies requiring the use of the accounts for all official business, considering providing accounts to planning commissioners, develop record retention policies and include legal updates on the Brown Act and Public Records Act during mandatory ethics training.

- Written by Fiona

It will be Time to Dance when the Fence comes Down!

State grants $2.5M for arsenic cleanup (Daily Journal)

Efforts to remove toxic dirt from the Burlingame High School campus got a boost this week when $2.5 million in state emergency money was granted to cover part of the $4 million costs.

The 60/40 grant will help the San Mateo Union High School District finish efforts which began earlier this year. The 8,000-square-foot lawn in front of the school was fenced off two years ago, eliminating a popular student lunch area. The dirt was determined to contain abnormally high levels of lead-based paint residue and polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. The lead came from paint used prior to the 1980s and the PCBs likely came from the fluid once used in electrical transformers, according to previously published reports from the DTSC. Now the district can begin to restore the front lawn and the back of the campus where portables used to be placed, said Interim Superintendent David Miller. The back area will be restored to a field for soccer and lacrosse teams.

The district originally planned to clear out the dirt and clean the area over the 2005 winter break. Since then, the price of cleanup has continually risen from $250,000 two years ago to $500,000 at the end of 2005 to the current cost of $4 million. The school removed the PCB contaminated soil over spring break. It will remove the lead contaminated soil between June 4 and June 29, according to the DTSC.

The lead and PCBs in the soil in front of Burlingame High School could cause health concerns if one is exposed to it for a prolonged period of time. The type of exposure students have with the soil poses little threat, according to the DTSC. However, the lawn will remained fenced off until the total cleanup of the area.

- Written by Fiona

Traffic Notice - 101 Total Closure

Traffic Notice: US 101 Freeway Total Closure (from city website)

Caltrans will be shutting down all lanes of US 101 between Broadway and Third Avenue for five hours, midnight to 5AM beginning Monday night July 2, 2007. Southbound 101 traffic will be detoured from Broadway to California Drive to Peninsula Avenue to Delaware Avenue to 4th Avenue, and back to southbound 101. Northbound 101 traffic will be detoured from Third Avenue to Humboldt Road to Peninsula Avenue, and back to northbound 101.

Click here to view the latest information and updates on the 101 Auxiliary Lane Project

- Written by Fiona

SMUHSD - Interim Associate Superintendent of Instruction

Full article in San Mateo Daily News.

Yvonne Shiu, lead principal at Hillsdale High School the past two years, was named the next principal of San Mateo High School at a district board meeting Wednesday night.

... The board also announced Wednesday that Burlingame High School Principal Matt Biggar will step in as the district's interim associate superintendent of instruction in January. Until then, district staff in the department will be aided by a consultant. A permanent associate superintendent has not yet been named.

- Written by Fiona

SMUHSD - Balancing its Budget

High school district balances its budget- Teachers' union thanks board for avoiding layoffs
(San Mateo Times)

The San Mateo Union High School District on Wednesday passed a balanced budget for the 2007-08 school year. The budget is designed to end years of deficit spending, which culminated in about $5 million in cuts over the past 12 months and threats of county and state intervention.

But the school board, recently lambasted for lax fiscal oversight in a report by the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury, isn't taking any chances. Board President Robert Griffin called for district staff to draw up a contingency list in case of unexpected shortfalls. Griffin also asked that the district's chief business officer provide the board with monthly budget updates, starting next fall. Board Member Peter Hanley added that he'd like to see the district build its budget reserve from the state-mandated 3 percent to as much as 6 percent in the years to come. That might require more belt-tightening, but it would prevent a repetition of the past year's nightmare, he said. The budget received a stamp of approval from interim Superintendent David Miller, who serves on the board of a state team of school finance experts.

Teachers' union President Craig Childress thanked Miller, the board and district staff for passing a budget that didn't include any more teacher layoffs.

- Written by Fiona

Train Station Renovation and Plaza

Burlingame to start station upgrade (San Mateo Times)

BURLINGAME The Americans with Disabilities Act was nearly 100 years away when the Burlingame Avenue train station opened in 1894. Once Caltrain completes a $20.5 million renovation next year, the historic station will be fully accessible to the physically challenged, while Caltrain will be closer to eliminating a handful of "hold out" stations that slow down the system. The project, which breaks ground today, is the first of three near-term plans for the station. The City Council is spearheading an effort to build a centennial plaza next to the station, and the Burlingame Historical Society is raising money to place a museum inside the building itself. The Mission Revival-style station is one of several between San Francisco and Gilroy that board passengers for north- and southbound trains on the same side of the tracks, forcing Caltrain to employ what it calls the "hold out" rule. Because the Burlingame station does not have a platform on the east side of the tracks,passengers waiting for a northbound train must walk across the southbound tracks to board. As a result, two trains cannot occupy or pass through the station at once. "You have to plan for one of them to go slower to allow another one to go through, so it's a bottleneck in the system," Caltrain spokesman Jonah Weinberg said.

Caltrain plans to revamp its other "hold out" stations, including those in Santa Clara and South San Francisco, during the next several years, increasing the system's efficiency, Weinberg said. The project also is designed to improve safety for motorists and pedestrians. Fencing will be installed between the tracks, while the portion of South Lane that crosses the tracks just south of the station will be closed. In addition to constructing a new platform, Caltrain will landscape the site with palm trees and other foliage. Burlingame officials and residents had extensive input in the landscape design, a collaboration that City Councilman Russ Cohen called "healthy and productive."

The city has allocated $50,000 for a landscape architect to come up with designs for the centennial plaza. Mayor Terry Nagel said she does not, however, expect the plaza to be completed in time for the city's 100th-anniversary celebration in June, because construction will not begin until the Caltrain project is finished in May 2008. The city intends to pay for the plaza, which will be situated to the west of the station, with about $250,000 in private donations. "I think it's going to be fantastic," said Jeannie Gilmore, a board member of Citizens for a Better Burlingame. Gilmore said she is particularly excited about the safety of the new station and making the plaza "a place of enormous community interest," where concerts and other cultural events can take place.

The historical society has begun a $1 million fundraising drive to pay for a new museum inside the station, which is no longer used as a ticket office. Cohen, president of the society, hopes to open the museum on a limited basis by the end of the year. While Caltrain works to make its trains run faster, a group of 11 current and former city council members throughout San Mateo County, including the mayor of Burlingame, are lobbying the agency to rejigger its schedule. One goal of the Coalition to Expand Transit Service is to restore local service to some stations, including the Broadway station in Burlingame, that Caltrain has cut out of its weekday schedules. Nagel said the coalition wants Caltrain to increase the number of local stops, improve the connections between the Peninsula's various transit systems and expedite safety improvements

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For those who are awitchin' and a()itchin' about "rushing" through a Plaza, hope this article puts your minds to rest because we certainly don't want to "rush" anything in Burlingame.

- Written by Fiona

Our Mayor in Sacramento - Storm Water Funding

Storm water bill could clear way to voters' wallets (Examiner)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Map, News) - With aging storm water systems a major concern for a number of Peninsula cities, local officials spoke on behalf of a proposal in Sacramento that would make it easier to secure funding for the systems.

Millbrae Councilwoman Gina Papan and Burlingame Mayor Terry Nagel spoke Wednesday on behalf of Senate Constitutional Amendment 12, authored by senators Leland Yee, D-San Mateo/San Francisco, and Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch. The constitutional amendment would allow local agencies to assess fees for storm water like they do for garbage, sewer and water treatment.The amendment passed a Senate committee and heads to the full Senate for a later date. If it passes both houses of the legislature, the amendment would head to voters as a state proposition in the November election. Categorizing storm water as a utility would facilitate the passage of bonds to fund improvements to such systems. Bond measures for storm water systems require a two-thirds majority, considered a difficult benchmark to reach, whereas bond measures for utilities only require a simple majority, Papan said.

A number of Peninsula cities, including Millbrae and Burlingame, have identified storm water system improvements as a high priority. Papan said she has seen flooding become worse in the winter months, as the city mulls over ways to fund an outstanding $10 million in storm water system needs. Last year, Burlingame voters failed to pass a $44 million bond measure meant to secure funding for storm system improvements and upgrade other city facilities. A coalition of homeowners many of whom said the tax structure of the bond unfairly hit new homeowners came out against the measure.

Even if a statewide proposition passed in November, Papan said Millbrae officials likely wouldn't go for a bond issue for storm water drains in 2008, saying that it wouldn't allow enough time to educate voters on the issue. We've been getting flooding every winter,? Papan said. The chances of it creating damage to El Camino [Real] or [Highway] 101 are increasing and we don't want to let it get out of control.?

- Written by Fiona

Easton Drive - Tree Selection

Courtesy of the e-newsletter, which is such a fabulous way to be informed:

COMMUNITY FORUM - EASTON DRIVE TREE SELECTION
On Thursday, June 28th at 7:00pm, the Beautification Commission will be conducting a Community Forum at the First Presbyterian Church, 1500 Easton Drive. The forum will focus on the selection of readily available alternative species to be used as replacement trees when an existing Eucalyptus tree requires removal on Easton Drive. Easton Drive residents and members of the community are invited to this important meeting.

- Written by Fiona