The Burlingame Voice

Fighting with firefighters

As one of the two or three most critical public services in town, the Fire Department merits our attention when things aren't going well--or at least don't appear to be going well--internally.  The Daily Journal above-the-fold headline 'No confidence' in Central County Fire Chief Bruce Barron certainly caught my eye.  I had been thinking about the Fire Department before this piece since there was an earlier piece about the condition of several stations and the admin building on Rollins Rd.  If you recall my fantasy post about keeping the horses in front of the carts regarding East side development of "thousands of new homes" here, I meant to include the idea of a new fire station somewhere on that side of the railroad tracks in the fantasy.  The DJ noted a report about the need a couple weeks ago

A consultant for the Central County Fire Department Chief wants to reopen station 36 on the eastside of Burlingame as the city plans for commercial and residential development, and concerns are growing over a staffing shortage that could eventually affect service.

Both Millbrae and Burlingame have planned to redevelop Rollins Road and the eastside into a mixed-use neighborhood, providing thousands of homes and commercial development but the rapid growth concerns Fire Chief Bruce Barron, who told the City Council of the recommendation to reopen station 36, which is being used as an administration building, during a meeting Wednesday, July 5.

It's hard to argue with the conclusion when you see the amount of over-development going on.  Now in the midst of this comes the firefighter union's lopsided vote of 'no confidence' in the chief

In June, 85% of the Teamsters 856 Central County Firefighters Union members voted no confidence in Barron’s ability to lead, asking for his immediate removal. The notice was delivered to Lisa Goldman, Burlingame’s city manager and the Central County Fire Department’s chief administrative officer. Shortly after, Barron announced his retirement in October. He has been chief since 2019. But the union members are saying it’s not good enough and want him out immediately.

Aside from the personnel issues now being aired in public, some of this has to do with the move to three-on-a-truck that happened more than a decade ago.  I had a front row seat to that move since my wife was in office and on the contract negotiating team at the time.  Memory is a little foggy now, but I seem to recall it wasn't as cut-and-dry as this note postulates.

The department staffs only three firefighters per fire engine when the National Fire Protection Association recommends four person staffing per engine as the standard practice, according to a presentation facilitated by Barron to the Burlingame City Council in July.

If you spend any time around town, you have seen the impact of the dual roles CCFD have when it comes to emergency medical care for what are now called "mental health crises".  You see the truck, the three firefighters, typically a police car and eventually an ambulance.  That is the three-is-enough scenario, unlike the full-blown fires when four-is-way-better kicks in.

The issue is whether this is a temporary tempest-in-a-teapot that will be resolved either way by October?  In my managerial experience, some people get wound up when their "open and honest" input is met with similarly open and direct responses.  As you can read in the articles, the next chief will have a lot on their operational and strategic planning/financing plate so the sooner we get on with it the better.

Cellblock 6 is almost done

I was driving down Rollins Rd. south of Broadway with a friend who remembers the Velvet Turtle days and the arrival and departure six years later of Fattoria e Mare restaurant after that.  As we approached the new building he said, "It looks like a prison".  And so it does.  I hope they didn't spend to much on architects for Cellblock 6.

This is the view from the bike trail along the channel at Bayside Park.  Doesn't feel like B'game does it.

B'game Dining: Some of the 100 Best?

What to make of the latest Yelp restaurant scores?  In Yelp's opinion we are rocking the free world with two of the top restaurants in......America?  You might ask "Where are they?"  I did.  SFGate is reporting on them: 

The best restaurants in the Bay Area are in Burlingame, according to Yelp. The business review platform released its 10th annual Top 100 Places to Eat in America list, which featured Burlingame businesses Gigi's Cafe and Curry Hyuga as the only Bay Area restaurants mentioned in the ranking.

Gigi's Cafe, which snagged No. 14 on the list, features a selection of specialty items from the Sriracha hot chicken sandwich to a classic BLT. The 6-year-old shop is known for its generously packed sandwiches but also offers soups and salads for those with a smaller appetite.

Back on Broadway--not the esteemed Avenue-- we learn

Less than 2 miles from Gigi's Cafe is Curry Hyuga, a Japanese curry restaurant that ranked 55th on Yelp’s list.

I wanted to try Curry Hyuga early in its existence, but that was Covid-time and they were only doing take-out on a night when I wanted to dine-in.  Looks like a retry is in order.  Who knew?  B'game is a dining destination. My reviews to follow. 

Global Warming Warning..or Not?

Watching the political gyrations around gas stoves and the news that China's population declined last year, reminded me of an article I picked up on a recent trip to Maui that is worth dissecting.  It was by the main Associated Press climate writer Seth Borenstein, but I won't pin the headline on him since I bet AP headlines are written by a different person -- or maybe ChatGPT?  The headline reads "Study:  Two-thirds of glaciers on track to disappear by 2100".  The first five paragraphs boil down to this:

The study in Thursday's journal Science examined all of the globe's 215,000 land-based glaciers - not counting those ice sheets in Greenland and Antartica - in a more comprehensive way than past studies.  The world is now on track for a 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit temperature rise  since pre-industrial times, which by the year 2100 means losing 32 percent of the world's glacier mass.

That's where things got sticky for me. 32 percent isn't two-thirds.  The lead author is a Carnegie-Mellon prof named David Rounce.  You have to go down 10 more paragraphs that are mostly about sea-level rise to read:

The Columbia Glacier in Alaska had 216 billion tons of ice in 2015, but with just a few more tenths of a degree warming, Rounce calculated it will be half that size.  If there's 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit of warming since pre-industrial times, an unlikely worst-case scenario, it will lose two-thirds of its mass, he said.

I always go back to Steven E. Koonin's book Unsettled for a bit of context.  He described the four IPCC scenarios of warming called RCPs - Representative Concentration Pathways meant to "span a plausible range of possibilities for population, economy, technology, and so on" (p. 71).  They are RCP 2.6, 4.5, 5.0 and 8.5.  The last one is the doomsday scenario, but it is falling apart as we speak as you can read here:

“The IPCC concedes what many have contended all along by admitting ‘the likelihood of high emissions scenarios such as RCP8.5 . . . is considered low.’ Indeed, emissions in 2050 in the International Energy Agency’s current and stated policies scenarios are less than half the quantities projected by RCP8.5. The IPCC also tacitly acknowledges RCP8.5 no longer qualifies as a ‘no policy’ scenario since the vast majority of countries have climate policies.

“And yet, IPCC references RCP8.5 (and an equivalent emission scenario called SSP5-8.5) 1,359 times–more often than any other scenario. Maybe that’s why the IPCC declines to assess the ‘feasibility or likelihood’ of ‘individual scenarios’—otherwise RCP8.5 would be banished from the report!

In the news business and in the headline writing business in particular, if it bleeds it leads.  We need to be careful about taking an incredibly complex topic and boiling it down to a headline that even the article it heads doesn't think is likely; even if you have to wade through 15 paragraphs to find that out.

When you read in the DJ about R&D building projects on the Burlingame bayfront getting exemptions from the no-gas code perhaps you can now relax a bit

The City Council approved an amendment to its energy reach codes, during its meeting on Wednesday, which allows exemptions for projects planned for the city’s Bayfront before 2023 and considers exceptions for future development.

Or maybe you just wonder about how you get one?

Favorite Post of 2022....and 2021

Let's close out the year with a quick look back at my favorite post of the year.  I was thinking it would be Planning for a Rollicking Rollins Rd.  We heard a lot this year about how proud the city council is of the "new neighborhood" going up in the East-East side--not to be confused with the regular East side that is demarcated by the railroad tracks and the North Park apartments.  The East-East side is also demarcated by the tracks but is north of Broadway and is newly residential.  The Rollicking post was a fantasy of mine that imagined all the things that need to be done for it to really be a "new neighborhood" actually had been done.  But it can't be my favorite for 2022 since it is dated December 26, 2021.  Let's call it my defered favorite of '21.  Check it out.

That leaves State Auditor: Housing "requirement" numbers way off from May 6th as my 2022 favorite.  It is the post that I find myself bringing up in conversations with all sorts of people.  The three paragraphs I excerpted in the post are damning of the whole process of assigning crazy high numbers of you-must-build-units from the state.  Tom Elias as the Daily Post is on a similar page as me.  His column on Wednesday noted that

Several cities have begun to fight parts of today's state domination of land use.  Four Los Angeles County cities -- Redondo Beach, Torrance, Carson and Whittier -- are seeking a court order negating the 2021 Senate Bill 9, which allows single family homes to be replaced by as many as six units, with cities unable to nix any such projects....No one can predict whether or not courts will find the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have vastly overreached in their power grab, which is all for the sake of increased density and based on unfounded predictions by bureaucrats who answer to no one.

Bingo.  Wouldn't it be nice if those four cities got some help?  And in other news, California led the nation in net domestic out migration from July 2021 to July 2022 at -343,230.  That's about like all of Stockton getting up and moving out of state.  New York came in second but is the highest per capita.  Either way, the State Auditor is onto something and should get more airtime in 2023.  Happy New Year.

 

Business Licenses: X misses the mark

Now that you have your ballot, you see that you have only one B'game-specific vote to cast--to increase (or not) the B'game business license fees.  (District 5ers also have a city council non-race to vote in since Rachel Cyr withdrew, but after the ballots were set.)  I'm of mixed mind on Measure X, and not because of a reflexive dislike of tax/fee increases although I do have that too.  I get that licenses have been $100/yr for every business forever, but I think the city missed the mark at the high-end of the tax schedule.  You won't find it anywhere but on the city site here, so I will retype the proposed schedule:

            Gross receipts of the business                    Annual license fee

           < $250K                                                        $200

            $250K to $1M                                                $300

            > $1M                                                           $750

That's it.   You can gross $1.25M or $125M and you pay the same amount.  Or $1.25B, looking at you Meta/Facebook/Oculus.  Not sure why there isn't a $20M or $40M level with a good-sized number attached to it.  Many cities take a percentage of gross receipts--I'm not in favor of that, but shouldn't some of the big companies adding crushing density and traffic to our town pay more than $750?

The other aspect of the measure that needs mentioning is the last bit of text which reads "....until ended by voters, requiring audits and all funds staying in Burlingame".  Sounds innocuous enough, but the Oct. 10 Daily Post ran a frontpage article titled "Ballot wording called misleading".  It describes a Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury report that calls out several ballot measures' language that may be misleading:

That included phrases such as "until ended by voters," which falsely implies that the measure includes a way for voters to repeal it later, the grand jury said.  The grand jury report, released on Friday, pointed to other deceptive "tricks and tactics" used in ballot questions, such as adding the feel-good phrases like "all funds spent locally".

Whooops.  Measure X is two-for-two.  We shall see if anyone decides to use the Santa Clara findings to challenge the result here in B'game.

Bayfront: And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on

I didn't have the heart to post on the 1.5 million square foot development on Old Bayshore that is moving ahead.  I think it's centered at the old Gulliver's location.  That's a lot of development pressure on our infrastructure and traffic, but it's not alone.  Here is the Red Roof Inn redevelopment being discussed in the DJ

A proposed bioscience building on the Burlingame Bayfront can be reduced in height from 226 feet, which would be the tallest in the city, but by how much and when is still being decided, the developer told the Planning Commission.

The building is being proposed at the site of the current Red Roof Inn, at 777 Airport Blvd., and commissioners previously had issues with not only its height, but its massing and public amenities.  “Again, we are trading this height limit for public benefit,” Michael Gaul, chair of the Planning Commission, said.

The developing architect, M. Arthur Gensler & Associates Inc. responded to the commission’s height concerns with a 32-foot reduction if their building is approved by January 2023 for a concrete structure, totaling its height to 194 feet. If the developers do not get it approved by this January they will revert to a steel structured building, thus only reducing the building by 14 feet. It would then reach 212 feet making it the second tallest building on the Bayfront by a foot.

This one is also near the wastewater plant and will contribute mightily.  It will be all-electric so expect the grid to be impacted.  And of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention our water situation as shown in the latest Urban Water Management Plan.  What could go wrong?

After the Flush: Another epic government fail?

I was chatting with a regular Voice reader about our various topics, readership in other cities besides B'game (he thinks they exist) and he referred to me a "Mr. Water".  I like that.  It's just a bit narrow, but certainly accurate as far as it goes.  The Comicle has provided fodder for an examination of the other end of our water system--the part after the flush.  The Chron tied its piece to the algae bloom which is interesting and at least partially correct I imagine.  Regardless, here are some tidbits to consider as Planning Commissions, City Councils, County Supes and all the other development addicts go about their business of jamming more people (and their waste) into the Bay Area:

Algae blooms need food to grow, and this one had plenty: nutrients originating in wastewater that the region’s 37 sewage plants pump into the bay.  In other words — we wouldn’t have this problem without the poop and pee of the Bay Area’s 8 million residents.

“For those of you who aren’t aware, when you flush the toilet every day, you’re flushing nutrients down,” Eileen White, executive officer of San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, said at a news conference last week. The waste arrives at the sewage plant and is treated, she explained, but those nutrients — mostly nitrogen and phosphorous — remain in the water that is discharged into the bay.  There has been no evidence of a raw sewage leak; rather, it’s the regular amount of those nutrients that have long made the bay primed for a harmful algae bloom like this one.

The regional water board has told agencies that it will probably require caps on nutrients in wastewater when their regional permit comes up for renewal in 2024. But upgrading dozens of aging treatment facilities could cost $14 billion, which would double or triple ratepayers’ water bills, White said in an interview.

There you have it.  We need another $14 billion, with a "B" that we don't have, to save the bay from ourselves.  The permit clock is ticking down and there is no real plan in place.  If you click through to the Chron article, about half-down is an interactive map of some of the wastewater treatment plants with their discharge rates and nitrogen loads of that discharge.  For example, San Mateo discharges 10.72 million gallons per day with a nitrogen load of 1,300.65 kg/day.  The B'game plant was not included on the map for some reason, but a bit of sleuthing around led to the SF Estuary Institute where we learn that B'game discharged an average of 2.8 MGD back in 2017-18.

We have built a lot of stuff since 2017 and there is a lot more coming --- and thus going.  At least the Rollins Rd. developments are close to the plant.  How many infrastructure failings will it take to stop?  Our sewer rates are already going up 32.7% by 2024, but it sounds like that may not be enough. Tell me again about "affordability".  The final kick in the teeth comes at the end of the Chronicle article

“We’re all in this together. We’re all going to have to pay for this,” Ian Wren, staff scientist at the environmental group SF Baykeeper said. “If you’re OK with that, we’re going to have a better bay.”

Actually, we are not "all in this together".  Many of us have been paying our water/sewer bills for years.  We've already passed bond measures for plants and pipes and figured out how to service them.  Let's let the YIMBYs and the developers kick in for the next round of flush capacity.

Stinky Red Tide in B'game

The Chronicle is running a second story today as the "algal bloom" spreads throughout the Bay.  In yesterday's print edition there was a photo of a dead sturgeon at Coyote Point.  It was about two feet long.  The Chron notes

While scientists can’t yet pinpoint an exact cause of the bloom, which first began in late July, the fish kills are a sign that it has grown in intensity. It’s also become very noticeable, with the bay’s maroon-brown tint visible to motorists from the Bayshore Freeway or Bay Bridge and an estimated thousands of dead fish piling up near shore.

An intrepid Voice reader sent along a much better photo of the bloom on our bayfront and reiterated how much the whole thing stinks.  Check it out.

Not all graffiti is all bad

Most of the graffiti around town is ugly and indecipherable.  Here was an example from last month that was both before it was painted over.  While it's all illegal, every once in a while, a real artist drops a bit in a less objectionable location.  This example is on the side of the raised roadbed over by the entrance to Coyote Point as you turn towards the Humane Society.  You can only see it if you are headed out of the park and look down.  It gave me a laugh.