The Burlingame Voice

Flying Low Over B'game

B'game has a love-hate relationship with SFO.  We love being close; especially when you get in four hours late from New York at 2:30 am and you can be in your house in 10 minutes.  But nights like tonight when the wind shifts and gusts to the 30-40 mph range we get the storm take-off and landing pattern.  But I've lived in B'game for more than 20 years and I cannot recall seeing the landing pattern we are seeing today--and tonight!

I was walking home from the Ave. today and saw a commercial airliner come in low and slow over San Mateo Park, the Burlingame Country Club and I thought we were about to see another Asiana-type catastrophe.  But after watching two more planes make the same approach and a hard left onto the short runway at SFO, I realized it is just a very special wind pattern.  Here is another plane coming in for a landing on the short runway--taken from 101.

Mix in the various, but short, power outages from fallen trees and we have a dramatic evening at hand.

Still Losing the Graffiti Battle?

An observant local reminded me that we are not making much progress on the battle against graffiti in town.  It's a battle that will go on forever, but it falls into the "broken windows" category of policing--unless it gets So Big That You Can't Ignore It.  Like this example on the side of the Pottery Barn building

Those letters must be six feet high, but most local graffite is small and more suitable for the anti-graffiti app I mentioned a year ago here.  That would enable someone to report this pedestal for repainting

How about a New Year's resolution to spend the $8,000 per month--or hopefully less since we are smaller than San Mateo.

Broadway Expansion

The Broadway overpass expansion is picking up steam from the looks of things.  We noted the original demolition of the 76 station almost a year ago here and the building on the west side corner here.  The is plenty of dirt piled up on the east side and the west side lane closure and work in the breakdown lane has accelerated through the holiday season.

You can read up on the project on the city web site here, but here is the bottom line

The new interchange will be a seven-lane Broadway overcrossing approximately 170 feet to the north of the existing four-lane structure. Broadway will be realigned to extend straight across US-101 from the Broadway/Rollins Road intersection on the west to Bayshore Highway on the east. The northern terminus of Airport Boulevard would be moved approximately 100 feet to the north to meet the new overcrossing. The existing on- and off-ramps would be replaced. The project would retain the existing pedestrian overcrossing just south of Broadway and provide additional pedestrian and bicycle improvements at the new interchange itself. The total length of the project is 0.76 mile (from mile post 16.30 to 17.06).

I'm still looking for a drawing that would be worth the 1,000 words on the project. 

Mobile Monitoring

I did not have a drone on my Christmas list nor did I get one, but I have been thinking about it.  I know a couple of guys who have them and really enjoy a birds-eye view of things.  Yesterday's Daily Post had a front page article about an eleven year-old who got one and loves it.  75 bucks!  Even more interesting was the adjacent article in the Post about an attack on a guy leaving a bar in Palo Alto 2 am on Sunday.

I'll skip all the particulars except this part was interesting

The attack was captured in its entirety on a dashcam video of an unoccupied police car parked nearby, according to police.

Cheap (the dashcams are already bought and paid for, no gas or labor required to sit there) and you have a full record of the event.  And it worked.  Not only did it apparently help catch two guys but it also apparently exonerated two others that were with the first two when they were apprehended!

Merry Christmas, you band of friends!

I won't assert that the Blooming Vase window display is the best in B'game this year--merely that it is very, very good.  Check it out and Merry Christmas one and all.

Who does that reindeer remind you of?

Happy Solstice

Today is the shortest day of the year --the Winter Solstice -- also known as Yule or "midwinter".  Personally I just mark it as the turnaround point for the shorter days and longer, darker nights.  Six months from tonight is June 21st - Summer Solstice -- which is so much more fun when sitting outside in the lovely B'game evenings.  So chins up, B'gamers.  It's all brighter from tonight on!  In the meantime enjoy the lights around town that are intended to chase the dark away.

Tax Slippage?

I had a chance to speak to the president of ride-sharing company Lyft a couple of months ago.  The whole Lyft - Uber business model and the disruption these companies are bringing to the taxi business is unfolding in front of our eyes.  The same can be said to a lesser degree for one of the top B'game sources of bread and butter:  our hotel business.  The Transient Occupany Tax (known as the 'TOT') is a major source of revenue for B'game given our proximity to SFO and the number of hotels we have on the Bayfront.  Think $18 million in 2013 per page 37 of the CAFR found here -- higher than either property or sales taxes.

Both new businesses got me thinking about B'game's solvency and liability.  I checked with the City about taxi company revenues and they are pretty minimal.  Specifically:

The business license is $100 + $25 per taxi.  Finance collects the fee and the insurance certificate of automotive liability of $350,000 (naming the City of Burlingame  as the certificate holder), then waits for BPD to do the background check and fingerprinting.  Once that is complete, the City sends the business license.

The TOT threat from VRBO and AirBnB and the like is a bit different and some cities are starting to ask the question.  The San Mateo Times noted last week that 

Some members of the Palo Alto City Council are calling for an in-depth examination of online booking services like Airbnb that allow people to rent their homes to travelers on a short-term basis.

On Monday, Vice Mayor Liz Kniss -- along with council members Karen Holman, Larry Klein and Gail Price -- is expected to ask the council to schedule a study session no later than March 31, 2015, to discuss whether such businesses need to be regulated in Palo Alto.

One of the chief concerns raised in a colleagues memo by the four council members is the potential loss of transient occupancy tax. Palo Alto has 300 to 400 Airbnb listings per night and stands to lose $210,000 in the coming year.

Aside from the financial impact there are potental liability issues, code enforcement (or non-enforcement) issues and, as we are seeing in some neighborhoods in B'game, parking and neighbor concerns.  One really has to wonder if addressing this issue trumps things like fretting over affordable housing as the City is apparently doing here

As a means of promoting affordable housing policies contained within the Burlingame Downtown Specific Plan as well as the City’s Housing Element, the City of Burlingame is issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking qualified developers interested in partnering with the City to develop City-owned Parking Lots F and N, located in the southern portion of Downtown Burlingame, with affordable housing.

I'll leave aside the question of whether the City has or hasn't learned it lesson about "partnering" with developers from the Post Office fiasco ("What?  Our preferred developer didn't win the bidding?) and just question whether staff time is better spent on more immediate and more solvable issues?

 

Imagine Dragons

I'm a couple days behind on the local news about our latest sports franchise-- the Burlingame Dragons.  The Dragons are a development league team for the S.J. Earthquakes and will play right here in B'game at BHS.  The Under 23 team announced last Wednesday that the team would play in the USL Premier Development League. 

With the help of our Major League Soccer partner, the San Jose Earthquakes, we celebrated the launch of our new soccer club with the city of Burlingame. It was amazing to have such a show of support from everyone associated with the Dragons.

You can find their website here.  As a former Washington School dad, I particularly like the green and white colors the team has chosen.  And the mission statement is pretty good too

The mission of the Burlingame Dragons Football Club is to bring a world-class soccer experience to the people who call our world-class city home.

Game on.

Nice and Wet

Here is one of the seven creeks of Burlingame just before sundown today.  It flows right past little Heritage Park at Ralston and Occidental.  I definitely seen this creek with more water, but right now any water is welcome.

And the Hetch Hetchy water chart shows a flattening out of the decline here.

Keep coming!

Caltrain vs. CEQA

You all count on the Voice to add the behind-the-scenes story and no where is that more true than on high-cost rail and Calectrification.  The Times ran a piece a couple of days ago that was pretty much a down-the-line echo of the Caltrain pitch.  It included this assertion

Ackemann said Caltrain is committed to pursuing mitigation measures outlined in the environmental report. But the agency also says that, if the environmental report is challenged in court, it has the authority under federal rules to claim an exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act. Ackemann said this is merely an option.

"Caltrain has no option at this point but to move this project forward as expeditiously as possible," she said. "Right now many of our trains are running at 120 percent capacity or more."

Electrifying the Caltrain corridor will allow the agency eventually to share the system with the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which has committed to spending $705 million on Caltrain's electrification as well as new signaling and train control systems.

This CEQA issue has a number of well-informed citizens' eyes on it.  One of them notes the following:

This is intentionally misleading, and designed to "hide the ball." As a commuter railroad not involved in the interstate transportation of passengers, Caltrain is NOT directly subject to the jurisdiction of the STB or the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Rather, it is covered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) which assists local commuter transportation agencies.. No one claims that the FTA  preempts CEQA's application of Caltrain's electrification project.

But there are two possible bases for STB preemption of CEQA, each of which raises other problems for Caltrain which it would rather not mention:

1. Caltrain's  electrification project is an integral part of the California HSR project (Caltrain swears it is not), or
2. The use of Caltrain's electrified right-of-way by Union Pacific will involve transportation of freight involved in interstate commerce. (Caltrain and UP have not been able to resolve their differences over changes to the right-of-way, over which UP has virtual veto power.)

The important take-away here is that it should be UNACCEPTABLE politically for OUR Caltrain to try to exempt itself from the California Environmental Quality Act, the most important environmental protection law for Peninsula communities. Why would we let OUR representatives on the JPB do this to our communites?

So we will see how the hide-the-ball strategy plays out!  I hope our Council is keeping an eye on the ball.