The Burlingame Voice

High Cost Rail - Part 136 CEQA Lives

Legal victories for the people seeking to protect taxpayers, landowners, and the environment from the ravages of High Cost Rail are few and far between.  Even when won, they are sometimes undercut or slyly ignored.  So last week's ruling was a breath of fresh air.  The L.A. Times notes 

U.S. law does not allow state-owned rail projects to completely bypass California’s strict environmental regulations, the state Supreme Court said Thursday in a decision that ensures further legal complications for the planned $64-billion bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“It basically says that California has a right to control its own railroads and decide whether they should be required to consider carefully the environmental impacts of their projects,” said Stuart Flashman, who represents several San Francisco Bay Area cities in a lawsuit that contends the bullet train project violates state environmental law.

Other sources provided this layman's version of the ruling

In a nutshell, the court ruled that Congress could interfere with a state's operation of its own business property only when it was "unmistakably clear" that it intended to do so. That showing had not been made to the court's satisfaction, so in such cases CEQA was not categorically preempted by the federal statute providing for the regulations of railroads in interstate commerce.

Here's hoping for some real environmental protection!

 

B'game Plaza Parking

I had high hopes that the update to the parking lot at Burlingame Plaza would include some trees.  It wasn't a big thing back in the '50's (or was it the '40's?) when the plaza was built, but these days trees are admired as a welcome addition in parking lots.  Barring any trees, some shade arbors with or without solar panels would be welcome as well.  But perusing the work in progress, it doesn't appear that we will get any trees that shade cars.  The ends of the aisles might get a tree, but I did not see irrigation lines being laid when I was up there this week.  The longer fenced off area was just for storing equipment.  Missed opportunity?

Summer Tree Hugger Update

You can review my March 20th post on my pear blossoms here.  I am thrilled to see the Spring promise turn into Summer harvest.  Check out this photo of the fruit!  There must be 50 pears on this tree that yielded only 2 pears last year.  For me the fun part is that 25 years ago an arborist looked at the decay on the tree trunk and said "it's basically dead, you should just cut it down".  Fast forward 25 years and it's doing beautifully!  I'm so glad I ignored him and so are the squirrels.

 

B'game Homicide

Here at the Voice we are very interested in local crime, but we don't delve too deeply into certain crimes.  I do want to note there was a homicide in town Saturday evening, but since it appears to be a case of domestic violence and there has been an arrest, we'll just leave it at that.  This is the first homicide in a couple of years.

High-Cost Rail - Part 135 Deal with the Devil

The Chron has lured high-cost rail foes in with a provocative headline "Brown’s cap-and-trade deal could eventually kill high-speed rail" but how real is it?

A last-minute deal that Gov. Jerry Brown made with Republican lawmakers to win support for a 10-year extension of his signature climate program could cost the governor another top priority: high-speed rail.

In extending California’s cap-and-trade system of controlling greenhouse-gas emissions through 2030, lawmakers approved a Republican plan this week to put a constitutional amendment before voters that seeks to give the minority party more say over how the program’s money is spent. One-fourth of that money — more than $1 billion so far and $500 million projected a year in the future — goes toward high-speed rail, a project that Republicans widely oppose.  First, the proposed constitutional amendment must win voter approval when it’s on the ballot in June. The amendment calls for a one-time increase in the number of votes that the Legislature needs to approve how cap-and-trade money is spent, including the funds for the rail project.

That is one "if" piled on top of two others.  The first is whether Brown will actually keep his word to put said amendment on the ballot at all.  Then it has to pass and then the supermajority vote has to go against the boondoggle.  One can only hope.  In the meantime, local towns like Belmont may be waking up to what a nightmare the passing tracks are.  I had dinner in San Carlos last night and the condos being built right on the Caltrain ROW are immense.  I hope they are being built well enough to stand a ton of train traffic just feet away.

Soccer on the Bayfront?

The Burlingame Dragons are a welcome addition to the local sports scene and if the team owner stays on course we may see them playing in a better stadium than the BHS football field.  The Chronicle reports

But Nick Swinmurn, the founder of Zappos.com and owner of the Burlingame Dragons soccer team, says there is one and he hopes to fill it in a couple of years.  Soccer fans who don’t want to drive to San Jose to watch the Earthquakes might enjoy going to a bayside stadium and supporting a San Francisco team. After pregame stops at the beer garden and food stand.

The SF Football Club (which has applied for a USL franchise) hopes to build a stadium just south of San Francisco International Airport. It would cost $3 million to build and seat about 6,000, with room to add additional capacity if the team’s popularity grows. While the Burlingame site is preferred, Swinmurn and team president Jordan Gardner are also looking at other sites in San Francisco.

The Chron's map is not very detailed but it appears the dirt in question is Murray Field, behind the driving range just south of Bayside park.  Top Golf is poised to move into the same area, so this could be the third new development after the drive-in project.  And the Hyatt Cinema project looms out there.  The ripple effect on the Peninsula Ave overpass should not be underestimated, but it appears San Mateo will do whatever it wants there anyway......

Bemoaning Broadway

I'm not going to link to any recent newspaper article or City report for this post.  It comes straight from a dinner conversation last night with three long time North B'game residents who mainly use Broadway as their go-to shopping district.  The closure of the long time Thai restaurant Bua Thong Kitchen struck my dinner partners as another heavy straw on the camel's back.  They feel like B'way is stumbling and not likely to recover to vibrancy anytime soon.

I actually spend a lot of time on B'way, especially for a South-ender, and find it a welcome respite from the chi-chi, out-of-towner vibe of the Avenew.  But that's just me.  The little post office seems to run more efficiently than the sad little one on Primrose.  We've been doing a lot of take-out from Yangoon (free delivery in a DoorDash world!) and the cornerstones of coffee (Il Piccolo), friendly drinks (Behan's) and expert wine selection (Weimax) add to the appeal for me.

But what about you?  Are the "nail salons" and "massage parlors" getting to you like they are getting to my friends?  Are the empty storefronts dragging you down?  With the overpass nearing completion is the flow any better from the East end?  What would turn the tide?  Some evening music venues would certainly help, but what else?

 

Climate Priorities

Reading the non-stop drumbeat from Gov. Brown about Cap-and-Trade, our own little Paris Accord and whatever else he can think up (no need to link to any of it--you are already awash in it), I can't help wondering why he can't seem to focus on the biggest threat to the California environment that just keeps going and going?  Per KTVU

The last five years have been very dry and fiery in California, both in terms of numbers of wildfires that erupted through the state and the total acres burned. While the winter rains certainly wet the Earth in 2016, this year is also on pace to be a dangerous fire season, according to statistics released by the state.

In 2016, nearly 7,000 fires scorched a total of 622,000 acres throughout the state, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The year before that, 8,000 fires ripped through 880,000 acres of Earth, CalFire statistics show. The record year for acres burned in a fire was set in 2008, when more than 1. 5 million acres burned. The record year for number of fires battled was set in 1999, when more than 11,000 wildfires burned through the state.

This week, crews were fighting 14 large wildfires throughout the state, including the biggest one in Northern California’s Butte County, where the Wall Fire, which had scorched about 6,000 acres and displaced 4,000 people.

Dry years have fires.  Wet years cause undergrowth to bloom and hence more fires.  Wouldn't it be sensible to address this with more manpower, aircraft, trucks, lookouts, sensors, etc?  Isn't it obvious?

 

Looking Ahead to Election 2017

November 7th is less than four months away and candidates for City Council can "pull papers" on Monday, so the electoral dance has begun.  The Voice will be watching closely as always starting with our note here that all three incumbents intend to run for reelection.  Mssrs. Brownrigg and Ortiz and Ms. Keighran present a formidable front to any challengers, but who knows who might step forward to take on the status quo?

Get ready for more of this

Update/Addition:  Yesterday's Post added the fact that the 3 year terms for B'game School District board members Kay Coskey and Davina Drabkin are also up in November.  No word on whether either or both will be seeking reelection.

A Fine Educator Retires

Even though I was a Washington School parent, I would occasionally run across Paula Valerio at school events like BCE fund raisers and the like.  She also had a fine appreciation for the historic aspects of schooling in our historic town.  This Daily Journal piece discussing Paula's retirement is a nice read about a nice lady--even if she does consider herself a bulldog.

When she arrived at McKinley Elementary School, it was one the district’s smallest and served only 260 students. In the past dozen years, the school’s enrollment has floated over 500 and the Spanish immersion program has 240 students.

As enrollment increased, so did the depth of the immersion program’s curriculum, said Valerio and the result is a master plan that “continues to be an example to school districts that are thinking about developing an immersion program.”

Superintendent Maggie MacIsaac expressed her appreciation for Valerio’s contribution to the district.

“Paula embodied the spirit at McKinley School; fun loving and honoring rich traditions,” she said in an email. “She was the principal that started the Spanish dual immersion program in Burlingame and she was a champion for the program.”

Happy retirement, Paula!