The Burlingame Voice

Council Debate 2.0 Quietly the Same

All three candidates made time on a beautiful Sunday afternoon while the Niners were winning their sixth game of the year to debate the issues once again.  Hosted by CBB this time with a better format that allowed for longer answers and some candidate-to-candidate questions, the result was very similar to the 1.0 debate.  Part of that was probably because some of the same supporters attended and asked some of the same questions hoping to show their candidates' best sides.

The questions included:  What have you done (or would you do) to diversify our revenue sources?  How have you helped link the City and the schools?  How have you increased community involvement? What about high-speed rail especially vis a vis the "blended solution"?  What would you do to reduce emissions (which is kind of a loaded question in this venue :-).  And what would you do about pensions and retiree medical benefits?

Ricardo Ortiz' challenge on the financial questions is how to "lay a glove" on the incumbents in a way that the typical voter can understand.  The incumbents have two advantages:  they have a reasonable knowledge of the details that allow them to talk for two minutes on it and they have one legitimate defense that the problems stem from Sacramento and, in particular, Gov. Gray Davis' term.

You may have received a detailed mail piece recently from local Andrew Peceimer with headlines like "Burlingame Expenses - Up, Up and Away!", "Burlingame's Ever Increasing School Expenditures", and "Did You Know a Typical Navy Seal Makes $65,000/Yr?"  Even with the charts and graphs Mr. Peceimer included, the reader is left to piece together the whole picture because it's complicated.  For example, you can't directly compare Full-time City employees between cities without knowing what assets they own and staff (like sewer treatment plants) and what services they outsource (like fire or libraries).  The mailer reads to me as if it is anti-incumbent, but does not ask you to actually vote for the challenger.  Ortiz can keep asking for the vote and he has one week to make the case.

 

 

B'game Does Halloween

In a nice break from campaign season, five downtown bars held a Pub Crawl last night for Halloween.  I only made it to two, but I hear the costumes were excellent earlier and later.  Kudos to Barracuda, Barrelhouse, Straits, Coconut Bay and Vinyl for putting on a bit of a show.  Vinyl had to point people back to their sister bar, Barrelhouse, when someone apparently fell off the bar and the medics were called in just as the crowd was headed their way.

Here are to DJs monkeying around with the sound system at Coconut Bay and a couple of the Trick or Treaters on the dance floor.

Council Debate 1.0 - A Bit Rep..e..tit...ious

I'm struggling to get excited about writing up last night's City Council debate--and for once it's not because of the candidates!  The League of Women Voters traditionally hosts these debates in City Hall and the moderator is intentionally from somewhere else and knows neither the candidates nor the local issues.  Unfortunately last night that led the moderator to ask a long series of what was essentially the Same Question Over and Over again about the city budget.  It's certainly a critical question and there are divergent opinions between the incumbents and the challenger, but four or five angles could have covered it.  It would have been even more informative if the League had realized that with only three candidates, a one minute time limit per question is unnecessary and counterproductive to learning what they really think.

So putting the format limitations aside, the main debate was over finances.  Challenger Ricardo Ortiz summarized his perspective in his closing statement when he asked, "If everything is running so well, why is there no money for the Broadway overpass?  No money for the Burlingame Avenue streetscape upgrade? No money to upgrade playing fields or build a rec center?  No money for the pension liability?"

The incumbents, Terry Nagel and Jerry Deal, used their time to highlight how reserves have increased lately , how open the budget study sessions are, how the budget increase has been held to 2% this year and how Ortiz' suggestion to bring in more hotels to bring in more Transient Occupancy Tax isn't sound business (in their opinion).  Ortiz' returned several times to the Grand Jury report that he quoted as saying the city needed to put away $6.7M but was $3.9M short while the incumbents noted that the on-going employee negotiations were private sessions that could not be discussed in midstream.  Both fair points, but not the kind of fireworks B'gamers have seen in the past.

On other issues, Nagel noted that the proposed Peninsula Ave interchange has been discussed many times and "we have managed to beat it off" each time.  While Ortiz noted three options and said he didn't like any of them, the incumbents basically said they didn't have enough information.

On high-speed rail, both Deal and Ortiz reiterated their opposition to the project from the beginning and their on-going opposition to all configurations while Nagel was much more guarded saying that she was definitely opposed to the four-track option but in her capacity on the MTC she was working to get to "yes" on a plan that would secure the federal funding.  Here are the candidates

Debate 2.0 will be held this coming Sunday, Oct. 30th from 4-6pm at the Burlingame Women's Club on Primrose across from the Post Office.  Hosted by the Citizens for a Better Burlingame, it will feature the candidate asking question of their opponents as well as longer answers.  See you there!

Go Rangers????? Why Not?

I know it's tough to root for the Texas Rangers even though you may feel sorry for them after our SF Giants beat them 4 games to 1 in last year's World Series, but as the Daily Journal poll notes you can root for the Rangers with B'game's own Scott Feldman as a reliever or the Cardinals with Daniel Descaiso from RWC playing infield.  You know what to do here, B'gamers!

Scott Feldman is a true B'gamer having gone to Lincoln, BIS and then he pitched for the BHS Panthers back in 2001.  I had dinner with his Lincoln kindergarten teacher last week and apparently he was a nice boy even then.

Tonight he came into Game 5 with one man on and one out in the 6th inning when the Rangers were down 2-1.  He hung a curveball that went for a single, but then got an infield out and a K to end the inning.  Well done, Scott, and the Rangers came back to win 4-2.

Here's the Panthers' field of play in Washington Park with some guys who are about Scott's age playing in the alumni game.  We're lucky to have such a historic field that teams travel from far and near to play on every chance they get!

Tax Policy Here - Measure E

From where I sit, the best taxes are those that stay close to home and close to the reason they are put into effect.  That's why school bond measures like the current Measure E are the best use of our tax policies.  As the volunteers fan out to knock on doors this weekend, the flyer notes that it gives local control and stable funding (see the next post on how tenuous such stability can be).

I also like when taxes and bond measures are designed with contingencies in mind.  For instance, Measure E includes this contingency:

Reduction in Tax if Result is Less Other Government Support

The collection of the education parcel tax is not intended to decrease or offset any increase in local, state, or federal government revenue sources that would otherwise be available to the Burlingame Elementary School District during the period of the education parcel tax.  In the event that the levy and collection does have such an effect, the Burlingame Elementary School District shall cease the levy or shall reduce the education parcel tax to the extent that such action would restore the amount of the decrease or offset in other revenues.

This is critically important since there is no way to predict what will happen in Sacramento over the next four years.  And with the vagaries of how school funding works (e.g. Basic aid districts, etc) it's better to be safe than sorry.  So.........

Tax Policy Everywhere Else

While we're on the topic of taxation, the shortfall verses the brand new California budget is already substantial.  Part of the challenge is described very well in the Saturday, October 22nd, Wall Street Journal article on high earners

During the past three recessions, the top 1% of earners (those making $380,000 or more in 2008) experienced the largest shocks in percentage terms of any income group in the U.S. according to research from Jonathan A. Parket and Anette Vissing-Jorgensen at Northwestern University.  When the economy grows, their incomes grow up to three times faster than the rest of the countr's.  When the economy fails, their incomes fall two or three times as much.

And it goes on to note "Only 27% of America's 400 top earners have made the list more than one year since 1994, one study shows."  That is to say that three-quarter of the very top earners were on the list only once in 25 years.

This week's Economist Leaders column has some advice that account for that volatility:

Make sure the rich pay their share, but in a way that makes economic sense:  you can boost the tax take from the wealthy by eliminating loopholes while simulanteously lowering marginal rates.

It will be interesting to see if Gov. Brown comes around to that way of thinking since he still has quite awhile to be in office and the higher marginal rates don't yield stable enough revenue to make his term comfortable.

Climate Capping and Trading

Yesterday's "adoption" in Sacramento is a good reason to remind you of our Climate thread on the Voice.  From the Daily Journal piece we learn

California formally adopted the nation’s most comprehensive so-called “cap-and-trade” system Thursday, an experiment by the world’s eighth-largest economy that is designed to provide financial incentives for polluters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

and the reaction was

Some businesses regulated under the program argue it will increase the price of electricity for consumers and hurt job creation by raising the cost of doing business in the state. But the program’s supporters expect cap-and-trade to spur economic recovery and innovation, by pushing business to invest in clean technologies.

While implementation of some parts of the program will begin in 2012, compliance for power plants and other of the worst polluting facilities actually starts in 2013, with others joining in 2015. In total, the plan will cover 85 percent of California’s emissions.

Yet the main issue is never actually addressed.  From a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal last week by Donald K. Forbes of the Virginia Scientists & Engineers for Energy & Environment, he notes that global temperatures

"for the period 1981-2010, as measured by NASA and Remote Sensing satellites, shows average global temperature departures varying from a low of minus 0.2C in 1985 to a high of plus 0.2C in 2005, with temperature departures plateaued to slightly cooling since 2005.  Moreover, that history is significantly influenced by warming and cooling spikes from natural phenomena, such as volcanic eruptions (cooling), short-term warming and cooling from ocean oscillations El Nino and La Nina."

Recall that this inconvenient data was exactly what the IPCC "scientists" were trying to hide by deleting e-mails and refusing peer review on their "research".  The hockey stick doesn't exist.  With today's announcement that California's unemployment rate dropped .2% to 11.9%, one has to wonder if Sacramento is focussed on the right things?

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B'game Revenue

Here's a quick update on our burg's finances from the Q2 Sales Tax Update showing Q3 receipts from Q2 sales in town from April to June of this year.

Gross receipts for Burlingame's second quarter were 4.2% higher than the same quarter of 2010.  Higher prices fueled service station gains.  Recently opened outlets contributed to increases from new car dealers, restaurants-beer/wine, family apparel and the building and construction group.

The Top 25 Producers were:  Apple Computer, B&N Industries, Bayshore Shell, Benihana of Tokyo, Cammisa Automotive, Chevron, Color Copy Printing, Elephant Bar, Garratt Callahan Company, Gus Unocal, Hyatt Regency, Il Fornaio, Kern Jewelers, Mike Harvy Acura and Honda, Putnam - nine makes, Rector Porsche Audi, San Francisco Airport Marriott, Sephora, Technical Instrument, Walgreens, WW Grainger.

Quite a few of those are close to the Caltrain right of way...and you know what that means!

Peninsula Ave. Redux

It seems like we just finished the Peninsula Ave. overpass project and the City of San Mateo is already looking at changes there.  If you live nearby, you will probably want to go to the meeting in San Mateo where

Staff will provide graphical illustrations of these two remaining options which are either installation of a median on Poplar Avenue or southbound ramps at Peninsula Avenue.

Details:      Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at the Main Library, 55 West 3rd Avenue

                  Registration: 5:30pm – 6pm   Workshop: 6 ‐7:30pm

If it's not one thing, it's another..................

Safeway - Part 71 Grand Opening

There's plenty of news coverage about the big Grand Opening of the Safeway that you can read elsewhere, but here are a couple of photos to capture the event for posterity.  First, the Safeway Division manager (Mr. Schroeder, I believe) discussing the project with a chart on how the Working Group evolved the design

And then the actual ribbon cutting which is always fun since the ribbon has already been cut and the big scissors are fake

The eats and drinks at the reception were for real, though.  One news item you won't read elsewhere is that Safeway got its distributors to pour "top shelf" including Cristal, Caymus, Groth Reserve, Gaja, BV De Latour, Mount Veeder, Dominus, etc.  Post event discussions centered on how Mollie's, Lunardi's, Trader Joe's et al will choose to compete.  Mollie's is advertising an impressive sales (save $30 on $150 worth of groceries right before Thanksgiving).  We'll look at some of the other store features later, but here is an obvious Voice favorite from the front corner of the lot.