The Burlingame Voice

Safeway - Part 73 Which Wich is Open

The string of retail stores on Primrose has only one open space left now that Which Wich has opened.  I haven't been yet, but early reviews are positive.  Coupled with the addition of another Subway near the post office, we are awash in sandwich places downtown.  Don't forget the old stanby establishment either (Sam's).

And if you happen to be pining for the old heavy construction phase of Safeway you can pop up to Millbrae for a good reminder as their Safeway project is underway.  It will be interesting to see a Safeway-on-stilts which parking all at grade and the store on top.  I'm glad we declined that option.

 

We do it big in Burlingame

Recently, the world's largest lollipop was produced by See's Candies in Burlingame. Several years ago, the world's largest PEZ candy dispenser was produced in Burlingame as seen at the world reknown Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia. Both have entered into the Guinness record books.

Maybe Burlingame needs to capitalize on our penchant for producing big candy related items? I can see the welcome sing now...Welcome to Burlingame, home of the biggest candy in the world.

Fun Weekend

On Saturday, the Lion's Club "Cars in the Park" show was the biggest ever in its 8th Annual rendition.  Cars started flowing into Washington Park at 6:20 am and filled the space available.  There were 245 cars on display including this fabulous Vette

I chose to leave B'game for a Sunday concert instead of going to Music in the Park.  One of the finest venues for jazz anywhere is at Filoli.  They only do a half dozen summer concerts on the old tennis courts behind the mansion, but every one is top notch.  Here's a piano duo fronted by Rossano Sportiello with bass and drums.  Highly recommended if you are looking for something a little more upscale and are willing to plan ahead.  The stage and the audience are surrounded by the trees and gardens of Filoli and the shows are sometimes recorded and rebroadcast on KCSM.

I wonder if there is an appetite in B'game for this type of show with $50-$75 tickets and corporate sponsors?  That amphitheatre behind Hoover school would be an interesting venue.

Hot Houses in B'game

One of our local realtors does a monthly recap of sales in B'game, San Mateo and Hillsborough.  The June 2012 synopsis is illustrative of the heat in the market right now.  35 sales in B'game which is approximately our usual total inventory.  28 of them were above $1 million which is interesting because San Mateo had 25 above $1 million--and it is about four times our size.  At least one of them was a renovation success story as opposed to a tear-down tear jerker.

Average sales price was $1.336 million.  There were two homes on the market for more than 200 days and yet the average for the 35 that sold was only 30 days on the market.  Average price has crept over the listing prices at 101%.  I meet quite a few people who have their retirement savings locked up in their B'game homes, so this is reassuring to them.

Smoke on the Water

I like the saying "Where there's smoke, there's fire" because it is applicable to so many things.  While much of the country is dealing with a drought and crop prices are rising, we have a longer term threat to our water system.  Local political analyst Bruce Balshone has captured the Hetch Hetchy story pretty well on his blog  at Examiner.com.  The essence of it for B'gamers is

San Mateo County residents pay to support the system as part of their water bills. In fact, at the moment, the San Francisco Water Department is undertaking a massive upgrade of the system which will total in the billions. The improvements will also advance the ability of water pipes to withstand earthquakes and build in redundancies to improve water security. Local residents are already financially supporting this effort in their water rates. But any policy decision regarding the future of Hetch Hetchy is out of the hands of Peninsula voters as control of the system remains exclusively in the hands of San Francisco.

The San Mateo County - SF relationship is a rocky one.  The Crystal Springs Golf course, fuel taxes at SFO, lengthening the runways, the hairbrained idea of a toll booth on 101 between here and there, and now water.  That's the tough part about relying on legislation from 1913 to cover growth that was never anticipated.  Kind of like the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) in B'game that was set too high before anyone could conceive of the desire for such big houses on such small lots.  At least the Hetch Hetchy water tastes delicious which is more than I can say for some of the on-going residential development in town.

Brown Act: Comply...and Pay

This topic is a little bit of "inside baseball" but interesting for what it says about the state finances--and the $68 to $100 billion we have for Jerry's train.  The Brown Act is what is known as the "Sunshine Act" in some states and delineates how public notice of impending government actions has to be done.  The Daily Journal is reporting on Sacramento's decision not to pay for the costs

“When Governor Brown recently decided to stop reimbursing local government agencies for the costs of enforcing the Brown Act, he did not rescind the Brown Act itself – he just made it an ‘unfunded mandate,’” said county Supervisor Don Horsley. “It’s a shame that California’s budget is in such a shambles that this is how the governor is going to save an additional $95 million, which he says will be reinstated should his proposed tax initiative be approved in November.”

Despite that, Horsley said the county will continue to provide public notices. Local cities — South San Francisco, San Bruno, Millbrae, Burlingame, San Mateo, Foster City, Belmont, San Carlos, Half Moon Bay and Redwood City — also confirmed that the practices of making such information available would not change.

It's somewhat story-as-usual in B'game for nearly 20 years

Burlingame’s annual request is about $20,000. Since the 1997-98 fiscal year, Burlingame is owed over $200,000 to cover Brown Act requirements.

“We submit the annual reports and sometimes they pay and sometimes they do not. ... We don’t rely on the payments to run the city. If they pay, then it’s gravy,” said Burlingame Finance Director Jesus Nava.

Must be nice to just not pay one's debts, but we have money for a government-owned train that has no private investors in sight...........and a raft of new taxes on the November ballot.

Hoover Redux - $56 Mil Bond Measure?

We tracked the purchase of the old Hoover School back in June 2010.  Since then the rebound in enrollment has continued, putting the reopening of Hoover back on the list of possiblities.  The Daily Journal is reporting on where the renovation money would come from

Reopening Hoover Elementary School to deal with growing enrollment as well as updating technology could be aided by a $56 million bond measure the Burlingame Elementary School District Board of Trustees will consider placing on the November ballot Tuesday.

Growing enrollment resulted in the purchase of a previously-closed school in 2010. Upgrading the school so it meets state standards along with revitalizing the district’s technology will require more money which district officials have said could be covered through a bond measure. On Tuesday, the board will decide whether to put the measure before voters in November. Such a measure requires two-thirds approval. If approved, the bond measure would cost $30 per $100,000 of a property’s value.

With Zillow reporting B'game's average home price at about $1.1 million, that would average out to $330 per home per year.

The board meets 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 24 at the District Office, 1825 Trousdale Drive, Burlingame.  Here's Hoover from the front of the property

The zoning and planning part should be pretty easy since it would be returning to a prior use, but that's just a guess since things change over time (like parking requirements).

Brown vs. The People

When things slow down in B'game as they appear to be doing (but don't forget Music in the Park and the Farmers' Market), Dan Walters of the SacBee is usually good for something interesting.  Here's part of his current column that sums things up nicely

Three California cities have moved toward bankruptcy this year. A half-dozen others, at least, are on the brink, and the state budget is billions of dollars out of balance.

It's no wonder that polls, including a new survey released Thursday by the California Business Roundtable and Pepperdine University, find that by huge margins, voters believe the state is on the wrong track.  Not surprisingly, too, those voters overwhelmingly dislike the performance of the Legislature, and are lukewarm at best on Brown's second gubernatorial incarnation.

Given that disdain, given that Brown and Democratic legislators are hoping that disaffected voters will approve new sales and income taxes, and given that their tax measure barely breaks 50 percent in the polls, one would think that they'd bend over backward to improve their public standing.

So what did they do this week to earn the public's trust?

Brown staged splashy ceremonies in Los Angeles and San Francisco to sign legislation for a bullet-train system that most Californians don't want. But he didn't set foot in the San Joaquin Valley, where the initial segment is to be built and opposition is particularly strong, and he curtly dismissed polls indicating that the bullet train hurts his tax measure's chances.

Those nasty polls, those NIMBY "declinists" who don't like his little train, that nasty competing tax measure that "isn't worded right"--all to be ignored.  Click through to read about the slick salary maneuver they pulled as well.

High-Cost Rail - Part 78 "Spreading it Around"

This long piece from the Wall Street Journal is just too good of a history lesson to pass up and for the moment Allysia Finley's article is available outside the paywall.  I'll start it on this post and add the rest as a comment

Environmentalism may be religion to some on the left, but its high priests aren't all pure and righteous. Consider the not-so-immaculate conception of California's bullet train.

Last week, the state's legislature authorized $4.7 billion in bonds to start construction on high-speed rail, which had been stalled in Sacramento for more than a decade due to logistical and political malfunctions. This train is now out of the station—though it's almost certain to break down soon.

The project's godfather is Democratic Congressman Jim Costa, who as a state senator in the 1990s wrote legislation creating California's High-Speed Rail Authority and helped plan the 500-mile route between San Francisco and Anaheim. Before being elected to Congress (in 2004), he also authored a $10 billion state bond initiative to finance the project. Lawmakers in Sacramento postponed that initiative until 2008, fearing that California's recurring budget crises would make it a hard sell.

But sell it they did. The rail authority promised voters that the train wouldn't require a subsidy and that the feds and private sector would pick up most of the $33 billion tab. Expecting a free ride, voters leapt on board and approved the initiative in November 2008. Not long afterward, the authority raised the price to $43 billion.

Click on "Comments" to read the rest.

Burglars Caught on Easton

Following on our Crime series from May, the Daily Journal is reporting on yet another group of burglars that were working B'game residences

Efforts by four men attempting to break into a Burlingame home were thwarted Friday morning when a resident called police resulting in the arrest of two, Burlingame Police said.

A resident on the 2100 block of Easton Drive noticed a group of suspicious men in a neighbor’s backyard around 10:55 a.m. Friday morning, according to a press release from the Burlingame Police Department. Not recognizing the men, she called the police.

Officers responding found four subjects fleeing on foot.

They eventually caught two of them and found evidence of another B'game burglary in their possession.  Here's hoping they get the rest of them.  Neighbors watching out for neighbors is key to stopping this crime wave.  I have heard of a few more since May.  Some of the simple things like picking up newspapers for vacationing neighbors will help, but nothing beats eyes on the streets and backyards.