Month: June 2014

  • Sign Fine Time?

    The last election was four weeks ago this Tuesday but there are still Garratt and Buenaventura signs all over town!  They were illegally located to begin with, but one would think they would have the courtesy to pick them up by the end of the week—not let them sit for a month and counting!  Here is a big one near the Caltrain right of way taken yesterday.  Isn't it time for some fines including the Bridal Fair that was last month, Junk Hauling and all the other illegal signs cluttering up our streets?  At a minimum the pols should be on it……..come on Council–time for some direction here.

    Garratt sign_0629

     

  • Summer Music Line up

    The B'game Music in the Park series starts this Sunday at 1pm in Washington Park.  This year's line-up has four bands scheduled:

    June 29    Soul & R&B

    July 13    Country

    July 20    "Dance Variety"

    July 27    Rock Hits

    Perhaps another will be added.  It would be nice to see some blues like last year on August 3rd.

    Update:  I made it over to hear the band (West Grand Boulevard, named after the street Motown Records was located on) today.  Nice crowd and great weather.  I stopped by the BYBA sponsored baseball tourney at Bayside Park as well.  I also appreciated the Goodwill e-Waste day in Lot O yesterday–got rid of some e-junk.  While we are talking about summer events, don't forget that the ArtzFest has been renamed (again) to Burlingame on the Avenue as it returns to the Avenew on Aug 16 and 17.   And the Lions' Cars in the Park will be back in Washington Park on July 26th.  Both fun.  Here is the band from today.

    MIP_062914

     

  • Millbrae – Be Nice to Our Neighbor

    Some of our bloggers managed to take a post I thought was innocuous quite far off the rails.  The Welcome to B'game post was supposed to be a feel good piece talking about how the Peninsula and B'game have seen an influx of new people from EssEff.  This is nothing new.  My wife's parents made the move in the '50s and the movement has been constant since.  Things may be escalating as conditions degrade in EssEff.

    I didn't expect the post to turn into a Millbrae bash since Millbrae isn't exactly chopped liver in real estate terms.  I do poke at them for their foggy weather ("Milldew") but that's the weather!!  Not much anyone can do about it.  All of this did get me thinking about some actual facts so I took a look at the financial condition of the two neighbors.  The Daily Journal had a piece focussed on B'game a week ago that you can find here.  I prefer to go to the original sources which in this case are the CAFR reports on the cities' websites.  First, a population comparison.  Millbrae had 22,078 residents in 2012 and the B'game figure for 2013 was estimated at 29,892.  So B'game is about 35% bigger.

    But the budget situations are radically different on a population normalized basis.  Millbrae's revenue for Fiscal 2013 which ended about a year ago was $42.9 million.  B'game is on the same fiscal year and had revenue of $92 million.  Ouch.  35% more people but 215% more revenue.  That is still no reason to bash Millbrae since I bet there are more cities like them than like us and there are plenty in California worse than both.  I think there are some historical reasons for the difference based on when we were founded and how businesses grew up in B'game (auto row and hotel row).  Just something to think about and appreciate about our little burg.  Now let's try not to screw it up, OK?

  • H2 No – Part 3 Following the Hetch Hetchy

    The Mercury News-Time has a very interesting front page piece on the drought and its ramifications on wildlife, electricity and people.  It is well worth the read.  Here are a couple of important points stitched together from the piece

    Even though it’s first along the river, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which manages Hetch Hetchy, can’t just take all the water it wants. It is required to release water downstream so irrigation districts in Modesto and Turlock with older claims on the river get the water they are guaranteed.  These mighty districts — whose canals extend for more than 400 miles — sit atop the Tuolumne River’s human pecking order because they made their claim in 1887, under a water rights system that emerged with the early settlement of California known as “first in time, first in right.” Their access to water trumps San Francisco’s. But they rank below the rights of wildlife, which are protected by federal law — a major source of conflict in the region’s age-old fight for water.

    And the impact on electricity and revenue

    Thirty miles from Hetch Hetchy, it plunges down a 1,000-foot ridge at the tiny town of Moccasin, an old stagecoach stop, where it is funneled into turbines to generate 1.6 billion kilowatt hours of power a year.

    As a low-cost, no-pollution energy generator, hydroelectricity is a coveted power source. The Moccasin turbines generate so much energy, with such regularity, that they power much of San Francisco — from Muni buses and schools to the airport and port. Electricity is also sold to irrigation districts and on the open market.

    This year’s low flow, however, means less electricity, Ritchie said. Normally, these turbines produce $7.7 million worth of energy to sell to irrigation districts and another $8.3 million on the open energy market. This year, there’s enough to power the city, but the commission expects to sell only $1 million to $2 million to irrigation districts — and nothing else.

    If you read almost to the end you will get the story on the salmon impact as well, which we touched on here.  I haven't heard anything about B'game rationing…yet.  Here is the Pulgas Water Temple–our local shrine to H2O.

    Pulgas water temple

  • Happy Solstice

    8:20 PM – Sunset B'game

    Most B'gamers have a fine appreciation for awesome weather.  It is one of the things that drives the B'game real estate prices.  We are south of the "Milldew" fog and north of the heat of Redwood City.  (RWC Weather "Best by Government Test"—not!).  Our weather really is special.  While the best does not occur on Summer Solstice, I think of it as the apex of the year and that link will explain the technical details of why.

    But never mind the technical details, solstice is a calendar event.  June 21st won't even rank in the top 10 as far as great weather–just wait until September in B'game.  What we New Englanders call Indian Summer is even more glorious in B'game.  But I hope you all enjoyed the length of the Solstice day anyway.

     

  • High Cost Rail – Part 101 Scrap and Fade

    It is a pleasant change from the usual San Jose Mercury News-San Mateo County Times' "progressive" editorials when they attack the High Cost Rail project.  The Friday piece was a gem

    Enough with the high-speed rail lunacy.

    The Legislature needs to derail the budget deal reportedly cobbled together Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders that calls for spending 25 percent of future cap-and-trade revenue on California's high-speed rail boondoggle.

    The Legislature at a minimum has to re-establish its own credibility in having passed AB 32, the greenhouse gas reduction law, in 2006. But it also should withdraw its support for the bullet train and tell the governor to give it up.

    They go on to suggest

    The Legislature also has backed high-speed rail, but it should draw the line at siphoning away cap-and-trade revenue for it. Brown wants the train as his legacy, but this scheme smacks of desperation.

    Instead he and the Legislature should go back to voters to ask if they support the stripped down bullet train now planned at exponentially higher cost.

    One can only hope that another vote would happen since that would result in the boondoggle being scrapped and fading away.  But what is the chance of that happening?  Not good.  A better possibility is more critical rulings in lawsuits.  Another suit popped up recently described here and reminds us of one of my hot buttons–the quake threat

    Among the most serious allegations in the lawsuit are that the new EIR purposefully ignored the rail authority’s own report about the riskiness of its route.

    On Sept. 12, 2013, in response to a California Public Records Act request by Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design, the rail authority released an internal report on geologic and seismic hazards facing the Fresno-Bakersfield route.

    According to the lawsuit, the report  “concluded that the risks of ground rupture, seismically induced ground deformations, shallow groundwater, soil corrosivity, and land subsidence were moderate to high along the Section alignment. The Report determined that most of these geotechnical hazards are distributed across the Central Valley or run perpendicular to the section alignment.”

    But the new EIR did not acknowledge the rail authority’s own findings that geologic and seismic hazards were probably unavoidable on the planned route. Instead, the EIR concluded such risks were only in “localized areas.”

    Opponents must keep pointing at the Emperor's Clothes since the emperor ain't listening.

  • Sensible Preservation

    The Daily Journal ran this piece back on June 5th, but I know the public has a short attention span so I have waited until today to post this notice of the City Council meeting item for this coming Monday.  This has been in the works for a while and one can only hope it sails through on Monday.  As we noted here, it's a win-win.

    Plans to bring a historic resource program to Burlingame are being set into motion and will be up for a vote by the City Council June 16.

    The council introduced the ordinance, which is modeled after the California city of Dana Point, on Monday. Burlingame officials have been working on the potential ordinance for a program that lets people apply to signify a historic building within its downtown specific plan. For now, the city is looking to start a program downtown which could then be expanded elsewhere. There are currently 23 potentially historic properties in the city’s downtown inventory that was established in 2008 and includes the Burlingame train station, the G.W. Gates House, Bank of Burlingame and Farrell residence on Chapin Avenue.

    Now, the city has drafted a historic resource preservation ordinance, which would add Title 21 to the Burlingame municipal code. The main incentive of the program is that, under the Mills Act Historical Property Contract Program, homeowners get a substantial discount on property tax if they put together a plan for maintaining and restoring their historical property.

    Tune in Monday night to see if we catch up to the 20th century here in B'game!  Maybe losing the Sherman (see next post) will be the catalyst for saving some local treasures.

     

  • The Sherman will be leaving Burlingame very soon.

    The ship that has been anchored off the shore of Burlingame for several decades known to many as The Sherman, as well as by several other names, will be leaving either early in the morning on Sunday, perhaps about 1:30am and if not possible at that time then another attempt will be made at higher tide on Sunday at 4:30pm.

    Here is how she looked today with tug boat awaiting. The entire history of The Sherman can be seen in an exhibit inside the Burlingame Hillsborough History Museum inside the Burlingame Train Station.

    Martha and sherman

     

  • WAR at San Mateo County Fair

    Went to see WAR tonight. I wound up seeing WAR twice. Here is a video of what I saw first. 

     

    I think one of these Pygmy goats is named Joe and the other is named Juan. 🙂

  • Six Things to Get Right

    My "think pieces" usually come to me on the road, but this one landed right in my driveway in the WSJ on Tuesday.  A book reviewer named Yuval Levin reviewed a book called Why Government Fails So Often by Peter H. Schuck.  Schuck is an emeritus professor at Yale and the review notes that

    "To be successful, he argues, a public policy has to get six things right:

    • Incentives
    • Instruments
    • Information
    • Adaptability
    • Credibility
    • Management

    He argues the federal government tends to be bad at all these things.  I'll add his example as a comment, but mostly I wanted to post these six things here for reference as we example High-cost Rail, Friends with Benefits and some of the other recurring topics.

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