The Burlingame Voice

BSD has a new substitute teacher

In the feelgood story of the month or maybe the whole year, our own Vice Mayor Donna Colson has gone through the process of becoming a "30-day substitute teacher".  Her column in the DJ explains the process so for those who are interested in doing the same I'll post it here for future reference:

To be qualified as a 30-day substitute teacher, you must contact the district in which you would like to work and

• submit your college transcripts as proof of a degree
• apply for a Live Scan fingerprint and background check
• obtain updated tuberculosis screening, and
• pass a brief series of human resources training modules.

The process takes only a few hours to complete, and the district office personnel are incredibly helpful. The credential must be renewed annually. With this certification, one can substitute short term in any school and in any grade in the district.

B'gamers know Councilwoman Colson is a bundle of energy, but stepping into an elementary school substitute teaching role three or four days a month (that's her goal) is next-level energetic.  I recall as a kid the games that were played on subs (by the other kids, of course).  Here's betting that won't happen when Mrs. Colson is in class.  Click through to read the rest of the story.

Green energy: Is wind-power fizzling out?

In a Wall Street Journal article this week titled "Wind-Powered Projects Hit by Rising Costs" we learn that Big Wind is in trouble and backing away from projects.

Some firms have already eaten multimillion-dollar termination fees to pull out of East Coast projects or written down investments because of rising costs, battering clean-energy stocks. Analysts say New York’s attempt to find new price points acceptable to developers, regulators and investors suggests the broader market’s adjustment won’t be easy.  “Does the market have the courage to kind of pay these higher prices for clean energy?” David Hardy, chief executive of energy firm Ørsted Americas, said at a conference in New York last month. 

He added that ratepayers would ultimately be the ones ponying up. “But the question is, like: What’s the alternative?” he said.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  There are alternatives that are cheaper and way more reliable and way more safe for sea life and wild life.  Here are the wind numbers that are rising by the week

The new group of projects comes with a projected strike price—a cost index that helps decide residents’ bills—of $145.07 per megawatt hour of electricity over their yet-to-be-finalized 25-year contracts. According to the state, that is about 28% higher than the older proposals’ average but 13% less than the rate developers collectively requested from regulators.

New York’s new proposals will boost ratepayers’ bills by about 2.7%, or more than $35 a year, for the lifespan of the projects, according to state projections. The expected sum is four times more than what officials estimated when the first round of contracts was struck in 2019.

And then the chickens come home to roost as they always do

Equinor last week told investors it wrote down about $300 million from its New York project, or roughly half of its value. Shares in Ørsted, which has projects off the East Coast, Europe and Taiwan, have plunged nearly 80% since early 2021.  Other developers and suppliers have also taken hits. Shares in Siemens Energy, a key producer of turbines and other equipment, crashed to record lows last week after the company said it was in talks with the German government and banks about guarantees to back long-term projects.  General Electric, meanwhile, said in its earnings results last week that it expects to book about $1 billion in losses from its offshore operations this year and next.

As we await the latest rate increases for PG&E at least California isn't going wind-crazy.  I'm always amazed whenever I drive over the Altamont Pass how many wind turbines are still. 

California Ave: Navigating the maze

You can think something will look bad and it turns out fine--or vice versa.  Now that the reworked lanes on California Ave. are nearing completion the street appears to be a mess.  Never mind that there was nothing wrong to begin with, but now people are finding all of the poorly designed features.  We covered the accident inducing tight left turn at Broadway to go south on California and the Oak Grove situation last month here.   This week I parked briefly at one of the scarce spots on the west side of California to jump out and get a photo.

I swear I did not wait around for 20 minutes to get this photo.  It literally happened right as I walked between two parked cars on the east side (which also seemed more dangerous than before).  Some driver either got confused by a "lane" to his right of the line of parked cars or he just thought why troll for an open spot in a traffic lane when there is the nice "bike lane" available?  Luckily he went by me pretty slowly since there wasn't a lot of room to spare.

With Caltrans closing El Camino for whole days at a time (today "traffic will be diverted onto the 1200 & 1300 blocks of Balboa Avenue and 1500 & 1600 blocks of Sherman Avenue, Easton Drive and Hillside Drive." from 7am to 4pm) you can bet California is seeing some overflow.  The concrete islands that are painted yellow with little reflective signs already have tire marks all over them.  People are figuring out what a mess it is including our emergency personnel.  One has to wonder how to fix this.  In the meantime, everybody be careful out there.