The Burlingame Voice

Take Two, They're Small

My fixation with odd park jobs never seems to be left unsatisfied.  The lot between Chula Vista and Laguna just south of B'way gets its share of creative parking.  This driver just decided to straddle with white line since the spaces were apparently too small.

Concentrated Job Growth

Here is an interesting factoid from the Friday edition of the Wall Street Journal.  I think it is using data that is two years old, but I'm willing to bet that the trend is intact

The latest analysis of Census Bureau data by the Economic Innovation Group points to the increasing concentration of new business formation in a smaller number of U.S. counties. The findings show that 20 counties account for half of new businesses and that most counties had fewer business establishments in 2014 than in 2010. Even accounting for so-called dynamic counties, the total number of firms in the U.S. remains lower than it was in 2004.

Anyone care to bet that SF or San Mateo, and/or Santa Clara county are in the top 20 "dynamic" counties?  Think about it.  As of 2013, there were 3,007 counties in the U.S. and half of all new businesses started in just 20 of them.  Couple that with the fact that many of our established businesses are growing as well and you see why we have the growth stresses that we are experiencing.  Even with capable agencies we would struggle to accommodate such growth, but instead we are stuck with a bunch of agencies and leaders and some activists who neither understand the issues or the magnitude of the forces at work--not to mention basic economics.

KCSM Jazz on the Hill - 2016

This year's Jazz on the Hill drew a great crowd due to the lovely, light breezy weather (after the Friday heat wave) and due to Charlie Musselwhite's following.  The blues harmonica player has been recording for 50 years.  Instead of driving over to Berkeley Friday night and plunking down $46, people got to see him for free on Saturday.  Summer may be two weeks away but it didn't feel like it Saturday.

Pushing Back on ABAG

Yesterday's Daily Post had an article about the State Assembly candidates seeking Rich Gordon's seat.  It focussed on their commentary about the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and how they set "housing quotas".  It is a pretty good article getting most of the candidates on the record as being critical of the agency, how it calculates the housing quotas, and how they are currently implemented (i.e. city by city which is ironic for something called "ABAG").  These candidates are not in our district so I don't need to get into who said what as much as what the main themes were.  I'll just quote one of the best parts from Seelum Reddy

"We cannot live with their quotas," Reddy said.  "We do not have room for more construction".

In 21 column inches they hit on most of the main points:  the cost of the studies, the lack of incentives, etc, but they missed the Big One.  Altogether now people, "Where will the water come from????"

Deep Roots in the Community

Each year the B'game Lions Club selects a Citizen of the Year.  The Lions do a number of great things around town that involve a great number of people so when they select an honoree, you know they have done their homework.  For example, back in 2010 they selected Dan Andersen whom the Lions knew well as one of their own.  Yesterday, Lions President Kevin Osborne told the assembled Lions and guests that the honoree was widely known around town for her activities that benefit B'game in preserving history, garnering nationally recognized trees for B'game, supporting art and street intersections with "inconveniently located trees" along with fighting certain dangerous encroachments like High Speed rail.

This year's Lions Citizen of the Year is Jennifer Pfaff.  Jen is no stranger to the Voice community as our Queen of Trees and provider of many other valuable contributions on a variety of topics.  Here is Kevin making the announcement that caught Jen completely by surprise!  Kudos!!

High Cost Rail - Part 123 Show Me 'Da Money!

The true believers in high-speed, high-cost rail got some bad news this week--not that it will dissuade them from admitting this boondoggle will never work, but it was an financial wake-up call.  The Wall Street Journal noted

A mere 2% of the carbon emissions credits that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) put up for auction in May were sold. The quarterly auction raised only $10 million of the $500 million that CARB projected. That’s awful news for Democrats in Sacramento who planned to spend the windfall on high-speed rail, housing and electric-car subsidies.

CARB’s auctions kicked off in 2012 with robust demand and have raised nearly $5 billion. But demand has shrunk this year amid regulatory and legal risks. The California Chamber of Commerce has challenged the auctions as an illegal tax that CARB imposed without the constitutionally required two-thirds vote of the legislature.

Cap-and-trade revenues are supposed to fund only projects that reduce emissions, and the state Legislative Analyst’s Office has questioned whether the funding recipients are doing so. For instance, the bullet train will release more carbon over the next three decades.

There have been several studies that arrived at the conclusion that high-cost rail will generate more carbon than it would save even if the grotesquely inflated ridership estimates came true.  If you ever hear anyone talking about how green the HSR system will be, please tell them to go do their homework.

Bottom Line:  No private money, not much Federal money, much less cap-and-trade money and maybe none if the lawsuit pans out.  And for all this, we get to pay an extra 12 cents per gallon of gas for a few decades.  Lousy deal.