The Burlingame Voice

Can't beat a small town parade.

Hillsborough paid tribute to our vets and to itself all at the same time today. There was a parade that traversed Floribunda Avenue, past the Burlingame Country Club-where it all began 100 years ago and onto North School. The mood was upbeat. Good music,$1.00 hot dogs, (made my mood upbeat), and a rare polo demonstration. Here are some pics.

Looks like there was a sale on bunting!

The ladies in riding in this car are all over 100 years old.

A common sight perhaps in 1910. Not so much today.

Perfect Panthers -- CCS Champions

An amazing BHS baseball season came to a hugely successful conclusion tonight at the San Jose Municipal stadium as the Panthers knocked off a Palo Alto high school team that was on a 23-game winning streak.  The Central Coast Sectional championships include teams from S.F. to Monterey in 3 divisions based on the size of the schools.  16 teams make the Sectionals in each division and only one wins four games in a row to take it all--this year it is the Panthers.

I've been watching Panther baseball closely for the last four years and it is clear to me that the secret sauce this year has been the defense.  Tonight's win featured great pitching by D.J. Sharabi, who got the win, and Zach Grotz who got the save.  It also featured a 5-run B'game explosion in the top of the 1st inning which has been rare for this team.  But the three double plays and error-free play for the whole game was the key.  The 5-run gut punch in the 1st was bookended by a somersaulting 9-3 double play by co-captain Forrest Armanino to end the game like a lightning strike.  The Panthers did not make a single fielding error in all four games!

Four error-free games leading to a championship is a coach's dream and may have been the deciding factor in head coach Rich Sciutto announcing his retirement on the bus ride back to B'game.  Scuitto and assistant coaches Ray Mellado and Joe McKane will step down from the top step in 2010 and let a younger generation of coaches guide the Panthers from here.  Ladies and gents here are your 2010 Division 2 CCS champion Burlingame Panthers at today's introduction with Coach Sciutto (#32)

And here is the dogpile after the game-ending double play courtesy of local photog Mark Hundley and his giant Nikon

"301 Airport" Plan In

The S.F. Examiner is reporting that Millennium Partners have submitted their plan for developing the old Drive-in site.  Locals will recall this as being the 301 Airport site that had so much controversy about access, traffic, windsurfing disruption, etc.

An application to develop the 16-acre site was submitted to the city’s Planning Department this month, Planning Manager Maureen Brooks said.

The plans submitted by Millennium Partners— a developer of luxury hotels and condominiums — include more than 700,000 square feet of floor space and a realignment of Airport Boulevard.

Brooks said this is the first application for the property in more than a decade.

Plans, though, are not concrete, Brooks said. Similar to all city projects, the proposed development will go through review, an environmental process and public comment period before construction can begin.

The plan also calls for straightening out the 90 degree turn in Airport Blvd. near the Roger Sherman.

According to a real estate site called Rofo

There's roughly 6,000,000 square feet of office space with a rough overall vacancy rate of 12%.  The average asking rates for Class A office space is $4.50(fs) and Class B office space is $3.50(fs) per square foot per month.

The financing plan should be interesting and less reliant on City funds.

 

Red Light Camera Demise

The traffic camera at Broadway and El Camino is doing it's job a little too well.  Many B'gamers know it's there and that the ticket is $446 a pop.  So the City is losing money on its $5,870 per month fixed-fee contract with Redflex of Phoenix, AZ.  The San Mateo County Times rework of the staff report that will be presented and voted on tomorrow night notes

(Traffic Sgt. Don) Shepley said although the Broadway and El Camino Real intersection proved not to be the right spot for a red-light camera, the police may at some point consider putting up the traffic device somewhere else.

Redflex is willing to renegotiate the contract, but the City isn't interested at this time.  The unmentioned downside to this decision is that I have heard the photos have been useful for investigating accidents in the intersection as well.  That benefit is not in the hard numbers, but I do know there are lots of people in town who don't like the camera and won't miss it regardless of benefits.

Carolands Carriage House Complete

Hillsborough has completed the renovation and modification of the Carolands Estate carriage house.  We last checked up on it in November, so here is the final view.  Well done!

High Cost Rail - Part 17 Ridership Fiction

Here's a nice round-up of commentary on the High-cost Rail ridership forecasts from Examiner.com.  Blogger Kathy Hamilton has pulled together a number of links that discuss how bad the assumptions really are.

Click it or Ticket (it)

I never connect my shoulder belt when I drive.  That's because I drive a Nissan that does it for me everytime.  Non-Nissan owners find the sliding belt confusing, but after 18 years it is second nature for me and the click of the waist belt is almost automatic in a Pavlovian sense.  So I am not likely to get one of the new $142 tickets for driving without a seat belt that the Burlingame PD are advertising.

The big Friday press release from local law enforcement indicates seat belt usage in California is 95.3%--so this PR effort and the increased fines are targeted at 4.7% of the drivers in the state.  My unscientific survey says that talking on a cell phone without a hands-free device is at least 10 times more common (47% for the math-challenged).  Here's hoping that while the cops are looking at seatbelts, they will also look for the tell-tale hand to the ear of people who can't figure out how Bluetooth works.

Not Taking Action on the Climate - Part 1

Here are photos of the least green thing that happens in Burlingame on a regular basis.  It may be good for parts of the economy and it probably raises average property values, but it ain't green.  And in cases like this one where there were mature orange, lemon, fig, cherry, apple and apricot trees in the backyard it is quite sad.

 

We have no requirement that houses be salvaged ("parted out" by a salvage company) before demo, materials be reused, rubble be sorted for recycling or certain types of trees be spared.  Not green.

Friends with Benefits - Part 4

The on-going saga of balancing the city's budget took another step forward as progress was made on some of the police contracts.  The SM County Times is reporting

Police sergeants and captains in Burlingame have agreed to pay freezes through the end of the year and are ready to cut retiree benefits, the first union contract that includes pension reform for a city struggling to deal with escalating employee costs.

But the Burlingame Association of Police Administrators, which represents seven sergeants and two captains, will get 2 percent pay raises in 2011, 2012 and 2013. And the retiree benefits for new hires would decrease only if police officers, a separate union yet to reach a new contract with the city, also agree to cut their pensions.

Here is the earlier discussion from last June that was started by the Civil Grand Jury report on employee costs.

Taking Local Action on the Climate - Part 4; Overcharging

Burlingamer Steve Dwyer has been keeping a close eye on his PG&E bills for almost a decade so he has the baseline numbers to find billing errors.  This article describes how he got a $300 refund for overcharges on gas usage. 

PG&E confirmed there were at least 23,000 smart meters that had equipment incorrectly installed since 2006.

PG&E is installing up to 15,000 smart meters every day and will have all 10 million of its customers on the new technology by spring of 2012. The new technology will eventually end the need for meter readers.

“It wasn’t the meters that had the problem. It was human error,” PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno told the Daily Journal yesterday. “In most cases, the issue has been readily resolved.”

Steve is a friend of mine and a solid technical guy so I look forward to hearing how he plans to exploit his SmartMeters now that he's gotten PG&E to fix them.  Here's the earlier discussion and photos of the meters.