Month: December 2015

  • Tricky Tree Question

    Here is my last tree-hugger post of the year.  Actually it is the last post of the year regardless of topic.  I hope you have enjoyed the year and Russ and I appreciate the readership and the kind words both in the comment section and when we run into people in the street.  Since it was an election year, readership was up, up, up, so thanks for that as well.

    Now that tricky tree question.  I see these maple trees around town.  Some still have their all of their leaves and some don't.  That is tricky enough to understand, but how about these two at the end of my street.  They are side-by-side and are exactly the same age, yet one is full and the other has been bare for weeks.  Why is that?

    Foliage vs no Foliage

    While you ponder that, please have a safe and happy New Year's Eve and 2016!

  • $15/hr: Great Idea….For San Mateo

    The Daily Journal attempted to get its arms around a proposal to raise the minimum wage in San Mateo to $15 an hour with a long article filled with quotes from various community members.  Here is an excerpt

    Brad Goldberg, owner of the downtown restaurant Vault 164, noted the average cost of rental properties in the area can stretch into the thousands of dollars; to the point where even $15 an hour may not allow someone to afford to live here.

    “Unfortunately, I think the answer of raising the minimum wage isn’t going to be effective. It’s really going to come down to getting control over what and why it’s so expensive. That seems to be the bigger issue,” Goldberg said.

    Goldberg said most of his employees are already paid above minimum wage and he can’t imagine cutting staff in response to an increase.

    Yet as Gosula and (Chamber of Commerce CEO Cheryl) Angeles noted, Goldberg said the cost of increasing payrolls will trickle down — it’s just a part of business.

    “I do want the minimum wage raised, yeah absolutely. But the question is going to be: where does the money come from to do this?,” Goldberg said. “And that’s a tricky one, because it’s like everything else, when something goes up, whether it’s the cost of meat or your rent, the simplest answer is always just to raise prices.”

    I think this is a fabulous idea…for B'game and Belmont.  San Mateo should go for it.  After the 67% increase, B'game will probably get a nice influx of small businesses and we might even get a few restaurants back from San Mateo –  Roti, Moon McShane's and Gao Paong come to mind.  SM Deputy Mayor David Lim starts talking about carve outs for certain types of businesses and workers, so the gerrymandering of incomes is apparently on the table, too.  I say go for it.  You just have to ignore supply and demand as any number of economists…and business owners know:

    The belief that increasing the minimum wage is socially beneficial is a delusion.  It is short-sighted and ignores evident reality. Workers who retain their jobs are made better off but only at the expense of unskilled, mostly young, workers who either lose their jobs or can’t find a job at the legal minimum.  A higher minimum wage attracts new entrants but does not guarantee them a job.  What happens on the demand side of the market is not surprising: if the minimum wage exceeds the prevailing market wage (determined by supply and demand), some workers will lose their jobs or have their hours cut.

    You always want to live next to the regime (city, state, etc) that is doing the ignoring.

  • Coffee and a Newspaper

    Do you remember how the Internet was going to kill libraries?  It may be happening in some places, but I was in the main B'game library this week and it was pleasantly busy.  The remodel gives it a bit more of a communal feel and the imminent arrival of the cafe will add to that feel.  With Philz about to open a block away, I wonder what brand(s) the library will be serving?  The sign that says Fika is a Swedish reference to "coffee break", but that may or may not translate to using the Gevalia brand.

    Library Cafe

  • High-Cost Rail – Part 119 4 out of 5 Are Better Than Rich Gordon

    Shall we have one more high-cost rail post for the year?  Why not.  The Daily Post has done the legwork on the five candidates seeking to replace termed-out Assemblyman Rich Gordon for the seat located just south of our own Kevin Mullin.  The Post talked to all five and unfortunately none of them had the huevos to just say no to high-cost rail, but four of the five are less supportive than Gordon was in his day.  Here's a taste of each:

    Palo Alto councilman Marc Berman:  "he said he would like to see the money go towards regional projects to alleviate traffic in the Bay Area before working on HSR."  That's nice, except there is no "money".  Even the initial bucks from Prop 1A couldn't be reallocated and there ain't any more after that, especially if you read the Cap and Trade limits like a normal person would read English.

    Menlo Park councilman Peter Ohtaki:  "he certainly accepts the blended system, which has HSR sharing the train tracks with Caltrain along the mid-Peninsula.  Before the blended system was proposed, HSR was proposing building its own set of tracks down the Peninsula, which Ohtaki said would have split the cities in two."  Except even the blended system will require crossing closures and the increased frequency, noise and grade separations will still split cities in two.

    Cupertino Mayor Barry Chang:  "California needs HSR, but not the project that is being proposed.  'I'm worried that it's not going to work' he said.  The Central Valley needs HSR, but he'd like to see the tracks run along I-5 then the system could branch off to other areas of the Central Valley."   He might want to revisit the pitiful ridership numbers for the current SF-LA proposal before espousing a worse business plan.

    Vicki Veenker, a Palo Alto patent attorney, "said she questions why HSR needs to go up the mid-Peninsula to San Francisco, as opposed to stopping in San Jose. 'If you look at other metro areas in other parts of the world, the HS of HSR doesn't happen until you get out of the metro area".  Veenker makes the most sense of the bunch.  I noted much the same here for regular speed Amtrak service.

    The last guy, Mountain View councilman Mike Kasperzak told the Post he still supports HSR, so he is a definite "no".  While B'gamers don't get to vote in this one, we all have friends "down there" and once we figure out the best choice it will be time to make some phone calls.  We need someone from the Peninsula in Sacto talking sense and protecting the town.

  • Merry Christmas, Bloggers

    Wishing all of you in the little Bvrlingame Voice community a very Merry Christmas and a Happy 2016!  Here is one of my favorite tree ornaments

    Christmas ornament

    What a nice train station we have.

  • High Cost Fail – Part 118 Budget Plusses

    I won't get into all the local pols posturing about the most recent federal budget bill.  You can click through here for yourself (but I will point you to the last paragraph for a real laugh out loud Speier moment).  The aspects that were most interesting were:

    The bill allocates $100 million to address the drought in California and other western states, $761 million for major infrastructure projects including $150 million for the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s 10-mile extension connecting the popular commuter rail from Fremont to San Jose, and $8.2 million to develop a West Coast earthquake early warning system.

    No word on what the hundred-mil for drought prevention will go for–it's a drop in the bucket for desalination. BART to San Jose the "other way" (i.e. NOT down the Caltrain right of way) is fine.  Go for it and may be fix the computers while you are at it?  Similarly, one has to wonder if 8.2 mil for an earthquake early warning system should have two more zeros behind it?  Here is an old chestnut from 2011.

  • Almost Goin’ Postal

    The post office is never a pleasant experience one week before Christmas, but somethings just make it like a Seinfeld episode.  This afternoon was a perfect example:  a guy is hoping to get a passport and needs the photo along with the application.  One of the regular clerks is going take the pic but first needs to figure out how to close the front blinds to get the lighting right.  She apparently had never closed them before and it was entertaining.  The poor guy is on a stool against the wall and she proceeds to take about 15 shots moving closer, then farther, then up a little, then down a little.  People are cutting in front to get to the "windows".  She goes in the back to print it (wait 3 minutes) and the photo turns out too pink, so they want to do it again.  At this point he has to go feed the meter.  The regular line is now out to the lobby and growing by the minute.  Then the supervisor gets involved, looks around for the charger for the batteries in the camera, and takes the guy out into the crowded lobby to take another few photos.

    By then I was done with my business as he waited to see if the second set yielded a usable photo.  Only one thought came to mind:  "Dude, go to Walgreen's for the photo."  5 minutes, done right the first time, every time with the secret to success being a proper back screen and a piece of tape on the floor so it comes out in the exact right dimensions every time!  Probably cheaper, too!  I miss the real post office where some of this sausage-making was hidden from view.

  • Desalination by the Numbers

    Sure it's finally raining, but we will never have enough water unless we do something about demand (moderate growth) and supply (reservoirs and desalination).  The later option goes on line in San Diego this week.  The SacBee noted:

    A giant water desalination plant will open this week north of San Diego. It will produce 50 million gallons of fresh water each day, meeting 7 percent to 10 percent of the San Diego County Water Authority’s demands and buffering the region against supply shortages for decades to come.

    Oh, and it will be expensive – ridiculously so, in the minds of some critics. Built by privately owned Poseidon Water of Boston for $1 billion, the plant will deliver some of the priciest water found anywhere in California. It will cost twice as much as the water San Diego gets from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides the bulk of San Diego’s supplies.

    Yet San Diego officials say the Carlsbad project, representing a comparatively small slice of its overall water supply, will add only a few dollars a month to customer bills. Besides, with Metropolitan’s prices relentlessly rising, San Diego officials say desalination eventually will become competitive with the region’s other water sources.

    Click through to read more about the permitting and such, but here is the bottom line
     
    Depending on how much it buys each year, San Diego has agreed to pay $2,131 to $2,367 an acre-foot for Poseidon’s desalinated water, including the cost of piping the finished product to the authority’s aqueduct. By comparison, Kerl said the authority pays just under $1,000 an acre-foot for water imported from Northern California and delivered to San Diego’s doorstep by Metropolitan. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.

    Does that sound "ridiculously expensive"?   Two-thirds of a cent a gallon?  Anyone got a better plan?

  • The Burlingame Hotel: Don’t slam the door on your way out.

    ABC news is reporting that management at the Burlingame Hotel on the corner of Lorton Avenue and Burlingame Avenue has asked soon to be former tenants to sign an agreement not to say anything bad about them. Seems to me someone must have a guilty conscious.

     

  • Cycling for Dollar$

    Typically improvements in infrastructure for bicycles and pedestrians are obtained by regional grants. The San Mateo Transit Authority (TA) on which two of our local community members sit (with voting rights) has a call for projects with a deadline coming up very soon. This is a matching grant and will be judged using a number of criteria, ranging from connectivity to public transit, to sustainability, and serving an underserved community (ie. those who cannot afford a car, and bike to service jobs in Burlingame) etc.

    The Public Works Dept., working with an advisory committee of Burlingame cyclists and pedestrians (B/PAC) is applying for such a grant to study a project— it is a Class II or better bike “facility” that will run between Murchison Drive to the north and Douglas Avenue in our downtown area. Currently, there are Stenciled “Sharrows” (meaning, the bikes and the cars are supposed to share the road (Class III) but striping a lane meant uniquely for the use of bike riders is generally seen as safer, particularly when children are riding.

    It is very important in the judging phase of the grant that said projects have community support via written letters. These are relatively easy letters to write and a PDF from the city’s public works department shows the essential bullet points to include in the letter.

    ● Safer facility for all users (recreational bicyclists, commuters, students, etc.)
    ● Impacts to the underserved community
    ● Air quality concerns
    ● Impacts to local retail businesses
    ● Proximity to transit stations

    The letters of support need to be completed and e-mailed to Andrew Wong in the Public Works Dept. of Burlingame at  awong@burlingame.org ASAP. The deadline is this Thursday, December 16th. If we are able to show the study for design of the project has strong potential and support via the letters there is a good chance we will receive funding. Please consider sending a letter of support now.

    Here is the "sharrow"

    Sharrow on California

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