The Burlingame Voice

Travelling to the Dead

The Grateful Dead's two night Fare Thee Well affair at Levi Stadium was a sight to behold (it even had a rainbow).  After 2300+ live shows in the last 50 years, the band can even overcome the loss of Jerry Garcia on lead guitar to put on a great show.  If you are into it, you know how fun it was and if not, you are too late.  But from a Peninsula everyday-Joe perspective, getting to and from Levi Stadium was educational.

I headed to the 7 pm Saturday night show on the 4:45 pm Caltrain, connecting to VTA in Mountain View which dropped me off steps from the stadium.  The Giants game had just ended and happy fans had started south from Fourth and Townsend.  There was a soccer game at Stanford.  But without a doubt, it was a Dead Train.  SRO all the way.  Six bucks from B'game to Mtn View is a deal even if the weekend local is slow.  At least we had an amateur guitar player to lead a sing along!  Caltrain can afford to add another car or two.

VTA and Caltrain coordinated very well after the show with a special Caltrain holding in Mtn View at 1:35 am.  Imagine my surprise getting off the train at B'game Ave. at 2:15 am and seeing a bunch of people hard at work at Tell Apart.  The Twitter acquisition doesn't seem to have dimmed the animal spirits one bit.  When someone complains that some twenty-something just outbid their friend by $200K for a house in B'game you will know why it happened.

The Deadheads like to think this rainbow is Jerry smiling down on the proceedings.  Why not?

Big Cat

Here is a reminder from the Daily Journal article to pay attention when walking at night locally.  Park school is only three blocks from my dog walking route and mountain lions have a range of 10 to 370 square miles

A mountain lion was seen casually strolling through a residential neighborhood and near an elementary school near the northern border of San Mateo on Friday night, police said.  Police said they were first called to the area of Bellevue Avenue and Clark Drive in the San Mateo Park neighborhood around 10:15 p.m. Friday on a report of a possible mountain lion sighting.

Witnesses told police they had seen the cat walking west on the 100 block of West Poplar Avenue. They described it as weighing around 100 pounds.  Police received a second report around 11:30 p.m. about a mountain lion walking through the campus gate of Park School at 161 Clark Drive, a short distance from the first reported sighting.

Head's up out there!

H2O - We'll Never Have Enough

As I watch my lawn fade to brown and read the local news, the thought occurs to me that we will never catch up to the water requirements at the rate we are going.  El Nino next year or not, there is just too much development pressure and not enough activity on the reservoir or desalinization front.  It doesn't appear that there is any reservoir capacity in the works and desal is limited to a couple spot in SoCal.

Consider this.  The Post article titled 'Arrivederci' to Pete's Harbor lists the size of that long-running project that is about to be approved as 402 condos within 10 buildings plus 308 condos in a large building wrapped around the garage.  That is 710 condos where a 320 seat restaurant used to be.

Or consider what our neighbors to the north are thinking of as reported by the DJ

The draft environmental impact report and Millbrae Station Area Specific Plan will come before the Millbrae officials Tuesday, June 30, during a joint meeting of the City Council and Planning Commission.

The massive undertaking aims to add roughly 400,000 square feet of office space, about 79,000 square feet of retail space and more than 800 residential units split between two projects located on an 116-acre site next to the transit station off Millbrae Avenue.

Once you realize these two are just a drop in the development bucket, we could have 3 or 4 consecutive El Ninos and it probably wouldn't catch up.  The questions remain, "Is there a will on the part of B'game to be different?  And who will show the courage to hold the line?"  The alternative is more late, insufficient scrambling for the infrastructure to keep up while the well runs dry.

June 29th update:  The Post delivers a front page headline and article to buttress the point of view.

Buried deep in the article is the fact that "as of April, the city had about 2.725 new housing units somewhere in the pipeline...".  Kiss your lawn goodbye.
 

Peninsula Ave. Interchange - Back, Really?

I spoke with two very plugged-in South B'gamers recently about the resuscitation of the Peninsula Ave. interchange.  We first addressed it four years ago here.  Former city commissioner Laura Hesselgren is one local who has been watching the events and has contributed this piece to the Voice

I just wanted to make everyone in the Lyon Hoag and Oak Grove Manor area aware that the Peninsula overpass issue is back in play. The City of San Mateo is now moving full-steam ahead to get this on-ramp/off-ramp approved for the Peninsula Ave. overpass. The City of Burlingame did a traffic study a few years ago.  In that study it mentioned that traffic in our neighborhoods would increase SIGNIFICANTLY. In the past, the Burlingame City Council and mayor helped us fight this battle but unfortunately, with all the large projects in the works or planned, it is unclear if they will now sell us out and join San Mateo planners who support it.

Perhaps if we all join together to help fight this, we can get this project stopped. Along with the loss of our quality of life in our neighborhoods, local businesses like Nini’s Restaurant and Hot Wok would be negatively impacted, while Alert Door and most businesses that many of us frequent along the frontage will disappear via eminent domain.

Go to Thursday night’s meeting at the King Community Center in San Mateo at 6:45.  It is at 725 Monte Diablo Ave in San Mateo. Please write to your City Council members today at [email protected]. Perhaps if we scream loud and clear, they will help us fight this disaster for our neighborhoods. Inform yourself to the plan and review the findings using this link.

We are again faced with the Law of Unintended Consequences as overblown project approval after overblown project approval has the ripple effect of hurting people and businesses 10 or 15 blocks away.  Today's Wall Street Journal has a piece on the 10 year anniversary of the Kelo v. City of New London Supreme Court decision which is tomorrow.  Emminent Domain should be used very, very carefully and lately it has not been used that way.  Thanks for your thoughts and actions, Laura.

 

School Capacity Math

Courtesy of eagle-eye Lorne and a B'game School District slide deck about the opening plans for Hoover School found here, we can see the student numbers as they stand now

		Enrollment	Capacity
Franklin		609	560
Lincoln		499	560
McKinley		526	583
Roosevelt		341	358
Washington		342	358
Total		2317	2419
Available capacity			102

I have added the totals and calculated the theoretical "available capacity" which depends on the distribution by grade and the like.  Interesting numbers which will get more revealing when we add the Hoover capacity and the Summerhill project on Carolan Ave.

Housing Manipulation: Apple Edition

The editors at the Mercury News/SM County Times let a sensible letter slip through the cracks this week which goes to our Housing Manipulation series located here and here.  The letter reads

Forced below-market sales are unfair for all

The Silicon Valley Leadership Group seems to think that forcing an industry to sell a percentage of its product below cost is a good thing. To do so means that a fortunate few will win the affordable lottery at the expense of those that must pay the increased market price. Forcing an industry to solve a problem it did not create is wrong. 

Perhaps the Leadership Group might think differently if Apple were ordered to sell its iPhones below cost to those who could not afford them.

Steve Delva

Los Gatos

Kudos to Mr. Delva for the great analogy.  One could substitute many local and county politicians for the SVLG and get the same insight.

Broadway Overpass Progress

Caltrans is making visible progress on the new Broadway overpass.  With the recent approval of 450 new bedrooms on the land just south of North Park apartments, I have to wonder if they have left room for metering lights................

Baseball the Bgame Way

The annual BYBA baseball tournament has thrown out its first pitch and will continue until next Sunday (June 28th) at Bayside park.  The full schedule is here.  There are plenty of Dad's who couldn't think of a better way to spend their Father's Day than eating one of Phil's crab cakes and garlic fries and watching youth baseball.

The tournament draws a number of out of town teams to Bayside and is a great advertisement for a great city.  Play ball!

Turning the Faucet Tighter

You should have gotten a letter this week describing the water restrictions going into effect such as

Irrigating with potable water unless occurring ONLY on Mondays and Thursdays between the hours of 6pm and 7am with a limit of 15 minutes per zone.

This should be interesting to watch enforcement, drought-shaming, and whether it has much noticeable effect or if people have already mostly cut back.  Per the City:  If you want to report a water restriction violation or have any questions about water conservation, please call our Water Conservation Hotline at 
(650) 558-7612 or email us at [email protected].  Two more restrictions include

Serving drinking water other than upon request in eating or drinking establishments, including but not limited to restaurants, hotels, cafes, cafeterias, bars or other public places where food or drinks are served and/or purchased.

Operators of hotels and motels not providing guests with the option of not having towels and linens laundered daily; hotels must post notification of water shortage conditions in rooms. 

I spend a lot of time on the road in hotels and that notice has been commonplace for years in various states and countries.  I can count on two hands the number of times housekeeping has actually followed the rule out of about 100 stays.

Election 2015 - Start Yer Engines!

Here is the first official notation of the forthcoming City Council election:

The City of Burlingame holds an election in November of odd-numbered years. Two council terms will expire this November. The filing period for nomination papers and candidate statements is from July 13 to August 7, 2015.

The last election ended like this and John Root filled Jerry Deal's partial-term vacant seat here, so Terry Nagel and John Root are the two seats up for a vote.  Will we see $150,000 spent this time or will two seats instead of three keep the spending down?  The gates open in one month!