The Burlingame Voice

Downtown Power Outage

There a pretty big power outage near the Avenue this morning after last night's storm.  Safeway and Walgreen's are closed, but Mollie Stone's has power.  The AT&T generator is up and running so landline phone service is fine--as usual.  Rough start to the work week.

Tesla Rolling onto Rollins Rd.

The topic of Tesla moving its Norcal sales and service center to Edwards CT off Rollins Rd. came up at the joint Planning Commission-City Council meeting a few weeks ago, but with all the hubbub about historic properties, I forgot to post about the Tesla tax dispute.  The Daily Journal piece covered it in advance of Monday's Planning meeting about the permit.  The issue is

Burlingame’s position is it should get tax revenue since the sales take place in its city, said Meeker. On the other hand, Tesla’s model has been to pay the tax to wherever the car is delivered, Mefford wrote in a January letter to the city. For example, if a San Mateo resident orders a car and, once completed, the car is delivered to his or her home, then that city would get the sales tax. One of the conditions of the permit’s approval, as suggested by staff, is that Burlingame would get the tax revenue from sales from this site.

I'm not sure the taxation part of this is a Planning issue, but they have to start somewhere.  I also don't see any easy way to "split the baby" on this nor is state law likely to be very clear.  One this is clear.  If you want high-performance electic wheels, Tesla is the way to go because Fisker laid off 150 of its last 200 employees last week.  They are apparently going down with $190 million of our taxpayer dollars.  So this could be real money.  As one local auto veteran says, "bring yer wife and yer pink slip to Burlingame"!

I have seen both cars on the streets of B'game.  Here is a Fisker on Park Ave.

and the Tesla

Seeking CEQA Assurances

Today's San Mateo County Times has an article about the "reform" of CEQA.  The essence of it is that the move to "reform" or "modernize" the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) that dates to 1970 is losing some steam.  If true, this would be a good thing.  When you read "reform" or "modernize" in this context, think "gut".  The piece quotes Abigail Okrent of the Planning and Conservation League as saying

"We know businesses have complaints, but CEQA is by far not the primary thing getting in the way of development".

That's a huge generalization, but the article then goes on to describe some small time lawsuit between two gas stations in San Jose, but manages to avoid mentioning Gov. Moonbeam wants to gut CEQA so he can push High-cost Rail faster.  It also describes how the construction unions use CEQA against developers.  I have followed CEQA for more than a decade and haven't seen that happen, but it's worth searching for.

Our very own state Sen. Jerry Hill has taken over the reins on this from departed Sen. Michael Rubio of High-cost rail infamy who left to work for Chevron.  Jerry's campaign website notes he has a 100% rating from the League of Conservation Voters.  Here's hoping Jerry walks carefully on this one.  Just don't take any advice from ABAG (see next post).

Housing "Quotas"

The front page article in this weekend's Daily Post about Palo Alto losing its appeal on its so-called "housing quota" reminded me that this same farce affects B'game.  The Association of Bay Area Governments, known as ABAG, issues poorly grounded growth forecasts for Bay Area population, then uses those forecasts to dictate how much housing each city needs to add.  In Paly's case it is 2,179 new units over the next decade!  Paly Mayor Greg Scharff is quoted saying "Most people think it's too much housing for our community."  Indeed, and the rest aren't thinking.

The stick that goes along with this dictatorial move is the authority to pass out federal transportation funds.  In B'game's case, they want us to add 800 units over the next decade!  Yikes.  Here's hoping B'game and the rest of the Peninsula continue to ignore ABAG.  Where are the Greens on this one?

Dear Feds-- Please Ignore Us

Monday's City Council vote to try to skirt additional protections for the historically significant downtown Post Office building was quite disappointing.  As the Daily Journal writes

Most of the Burlingame City Council wants the sale of the downtown post office to be free of federal historical preservation requirements that can tie local control with the exception of Councilwoman Cathy Baylock, who disagreed.

During its meeting Monday, the council voted 4-1 to send a letter to the U.S. Postal Service requesting that preservation covenants not be added as a requirement of sale for the property at 220 Park Road. Doing so, the majority said, would tie local control and the historical considerations would be covered under the California Environmental Quality Act. Baylock, on the other hand, said the practice is customary and could act as an extra form of protection for a historical aspect of Burlingame’s downtown.

Let's hope the Feds do what the Feds do best in this case--ignore the letter.  Either of the "Top Two" proposals on the table would mangle the downtown as we know it and may not past muster on any sort of preservation of the building.

High Cost Rail - Part 88 April Foolish Planning

The San Mateo County Times' website is behind the dead-tree version as usual, but today's front page article titled "Project planning costs are going up" is no April Fool's joke.  The piece notes

California rail leaders said Tuesday it will cost an extra $97 million in office and field work to design the rail line, which has famously seen its construction costs double to $69 billion since voters approved it five years ago. ....   Rail officials say the new pre-construction planning budget of $878 million, while an increase of 12 percent, is still within the limit approved by voters in 2008.

It's seriously naive to believe either the "revised" $69 billion backtrack from the previous $98 billion number or to think that voters had any conception of what $800+ million of pre-construction planning costs could balloon to.  Further into the piece we read

In addition to the extra $92 million in consulting costs, Gov. Jerry Brown's administration this week asked the Legislature to approve another $4.8 million for the rail authority staff.  Most of the money will go toward filling 44 new positions, along with $826,000 to raise the salaries of existing staff...and a $26.2 million loan from a state public transit account to fund high-speed rail planning from July through June 2014.

So the robbing of Peter to pay Paul continues.  In a related news blurb, the SacBee notes

Were California's state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits.

Anson B'game's Grandson Visits

I was talking to a prominent realtor in town yesterday who mentioned that Anson Burlingame's grandson Anson III was here over the weekend to check on some property that the family still owns from the original land grant.  The realtor said Anson III was quite surprised by a number of things in town since he had not been here before.

First, he was astounded that there was no statue of his grandfather Anson.  He figured with all the wealth that has gravitated to Burlingame someone would have seen fit to put up a nice statue.  He was pleased to see the Burlingame Ave. train station in such good shape and being used for such a good purpose as a historical museum.

Anson III was also dismayed to see that after all his grandfather had done to build relations with China, the only Chinese restaurant on the Avenue was Panda Express!  He was hoping for something more upscale and refused to count Mingalaba or Narin--and rightfully so.  He was pleased to see all of the fine homes that had been built on his family's rancho, but worried that they were slightly overgrown for the modest lot sizes that his grandfather had advocated as being the basis of a strong community.  Other than those thoughts, Anson III was pleased with how the city looked and hopes to return soon.

He provided this photo of his grandfather in case anyone was interested in working on a statue in his honor.