The Burlingame Voice

Friends with Benefits - Part 7 --OK, Jerry Brown is Old, Now What?

Last night's gubernatorial debate at UC Davis was quite informative.  The state budget and the causes for the massive deficit were front and center as they should be.  Unfortunately, the three journalists asking the questions are all from Sacramento, so they did ask the agricultural water question but NOT the high-cost rail question.  They did zero in on pensions and we have followed the civil service benefit topic in some detail here.

While Brown tried to play the tough guy act on pension reform, it's really impossible to believe him given where his cash is coming from.  Whitman got off the best line of the night by saying:

"My view is putting Jerry Brown in charge of negotiating with the labor unions around pensions, around how many people we have in the state government, is like putting Count Dracula in charge of the blood bank," Whitman said.

You can read the full SacBee article here.  You can give blood at the Red Cross on Trousdale or on April 15, 2011.  Election day is the first Tuesday in November which is the 2nd.

Arachnophobic? Sorry.

It seems to me that this is a bumper year for spiders in B'game.  If you are arachnophobic, I apologize for this picture from my backyard, but he is just one of a dozen who spin all night and, judging from the size of him, he's eating pretty well.

Kids' Behavior - 2010

On the surface of our community things look pretty good at the teenage level.  The post below highlights our "stratospheric" API test scores and we know the academic accomplishments are balanced with good participation in sports, community groups, etc.  But the talk of the town among parents over the last week is about drugs.  There was a very public incident at the BHS football game that could have been catastrophic if appropriate medical attention hadn't pulled a student back from a drug-induced "flatline" state.

What is the sense of you bloggers on whether the local situation is the same/better/worse than other high schools?  Or middle schools for that matter?  Or even elementary schools?

Editorial Note:  Any posts that try to add any identifying information about those involved will be deleted.  Let's discuss the issue, not the incident or the participants.  Got it?

B'game Real Estate "Reemerges"

It is a bit tough to link to the article in today SF Examiner on B'game real estate emerging since the real estate section is hosted separately from the regular paper and pops up in a different application.  But you can start here and you might find it.  The Examiner writes:

Since the real estate world changed in late 2008, Burlingame's performance has been all over the place....Depending on the month--or perhaps the week--Burlingame's market is up, down, torrid or frozen.

And

From April to August, Burlingame settled into a pattern of $1.2 to $1.4 million average home values with sales figures of 18, 21, 17, 25, and 19. ....Whatever its fluctuations, in the big picture Burlingame's role remains the same.  It consistently ranks fourth, fifth or sixth (depending on how Menlo Park and Portola Valley did that month) among San Mateo County cities in average home price.

The piece then goes on to complement our schools at all three levels and quotes the "stratospheric" API scores.  Nice boost for our hometown.

High-Cost Rail - Part 31 Where's Caltrain in all this?

Mercury Times' columnist John Horgan is right on the money with his latest piece on High-cost Rail.  He writes:

Now, Caltrain finds itself in a bind. The Peninsula's commuter rail service is married to high-speed rail as part of a previous working agreement. The aim has been to hook up with the High-Speed Rail Authority so that Caltrain can be electrified and modernized.

I've been thinking a lot about this unholy alliance since SamTran's Seamus Murphy appeared before the City Council meeting back in August (photo below).  I think John Horgan may have inadvertently used the exact right verb--  "hook up" -- to describe what is going on here; except money is to change hands and you know what that makes Caltrain.  Horgan continues:

If local opposition is loud enough, the cash will probably go elsewhere. And that would leave Caltrain with nothing, at least for some considerable period of time.

And he reminds everyone who actually owns this right-of-way:

What has become the Caltrain right of way was purchased, in large part, by the taxpayers of San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties through the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board in 1991. Union Pacific continues to operate its freight services along that route as well.

But the taxpayers of the three counties, via the Joint Powers Board, control that valuable right of way. HSR needs access to it. The authority is a guest here.

Keep asking questions and talking to your neighbors who haven't been following this.

Parade Your Pet

Another signature B'game event is this Saturday as the seventh annual Pet Parade kicks off Fall.  The summer eventswere a big success and I'm sure the Pet Parade will be too.  From my experience, you want to survey the contestants up close in the parking lot across from Groomingdales before the actual parade kicks-off.  With the Giants on a tear, expect lots of orange and black.

The judges are Jon Mays, Editor of the Daily Journal; Lisa Van Buskirk, VP of the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA; Michael Levy, president and founder of Pet Food Express; and Jacquie Cooke Haggarty, president of the Mothers Club, so you know who to lobby on behalf of Bowser and Puddy-tat.

PG&E Pipeline

PG&E released a list of its Top 100 Segments assembled as follows:

One of the tools PG&E uses is a risk management program that inventories each of the 20,000 segments within PG&E’s natural gas transmission pipeline system and evaluates them against criteria such as:

1. the potential for third party damage like dig-ins from construction,
2. the potential for corrosion,
3. the potential for ground movement, and
4. the physical design and characteristics of the pipe segment.

PG&E also considers the proximity to high density populations, potential reliability impacts and environmentally sensitive areas.

None of these segments are in B'game, but apparently main piplines in town are near Skyline Blvd. (which would make sense given the location of the San Bruno explosion) and near Rollins Rd.  More information should be forthcoming soon.  The website linked above gives an overview of how extensive the system is.

Safeway Part 59 - Lock the Doors, Fire up the Bulldozer

I made it a point to be in Safeway at 5pm tonight and heard the announcement, "the store is now closed, please bring your purchases to the check-out".  Regular readers of this blog know that it doesn't take much to make me nostalgic about an older B'game building that is about to be torn down.  THAT WAS NOT A PROBLEM THIS AFTERNOON.  I've probably shopped in Safeway twice a week for the last 20 years and all I can say is "good riddance".  I'm ready for the new store.

Here's hoping a long B'game tradition will improve---how could it not???

 

BIDs are in --Time for Improvements

On Monday night the Council will assess what the voting results are for the Avenew BID.  There seems to be massive confusion on the part of some ill-informed merchants as to what the Council's responsibilities are.  They count the votes and, if the BID passes, they collect the money.  If the recalcitrant few cannot win the election among their peers--they lose.  Welcome to democracy.

Here is the Daily Journal's preview

Efforts to block the creation of a Burlingame Avenue business improvement district may have fallen short after city staff revealed there was only 31.3 percent protest petitions.

The petitions were allowed to be turned in until the end of the Burlingame City Council public hearing on the matter held earlier this month. However, numerous petitions were turned in which didn’t give staff enough time to validate and fairly count the votes. A total of 216 petitions were filed, not all of which were valid. If a majority of businesses oppose the proposal, it cannot move forward. Since this is not the case, on Monday the City Council will consider allowing the proposal.

Renew the Avenew!

Doggie Do- Not Run Away

Monday's Council meeting will be another busy affair with dog issues on the agenda.  The Daily Journal canine synopsis is

The council will consider extending the hours dogs are allowed to be off leash in Washington Park. In 2008, the council voted to allowed off-leash dogs on the upper field of Cuernavaca Park and the eastern most lawn in Washington Park before 7:45 a.m. Mayor Cathy Baylock and Councilwoman Ann Keighran opposed the decision.

Since then, a number of dog owners petitioned to have afternoon and evening hours. In August, the Parks and Recreation Commission unanimously approved a recommendation extending the off-leash hours to include 6 p.m. to parks in the same areas.

I was going to link to the City web page that lists the Park & Rec Commissioners' names and email addresses, but it's buried so deep that even an experienced surfer cannot find it..........