The Burlingame Voice

Water, water everywhere: Except in a bigger reservoir

We must save this missive from the County, the City of San Mateo, the Town of Hillsborough and the SFPUC for posterity.  The obvious question is how far into posterity will we get before this gem comes back to haunt us, our lawns, our gardens, our trees, etc.  The bolded text is my addition

Local agencies are working closely with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on monitoring the impacts of the storm on the San Mateo Creek and preparing for the incoming rains next week. On Friday and Saturday of this weekend, residents along the creek may notice increased flow as the SFPUC conducts controlled releases of the Crystal Springs Reservoir to prepare for the next series of storms. Flooding is not expected this weekend and we are tracking the incoming storm.

The SFPUC owns and operates the Crystal Springs Reservoir system on the Peninsula, which includes Lower Crystal Springs Dam on San Mateo Creek. This reservoir is a key source of drinking water for the San Francisco Peninsula and not a flood control facility. As part of SFPUC’s prudent reservoir operations, operators will need to conduct controlled releases of water out of Lower Crystal Springs Dam into San Mateo Creek to create space for expected rain inflow. These releases are planned with consideration of current rain and high tides to minimize impacts to San Mateo Creek. The goal of these releases is to reduce the potential for reservoir spillover during periods of extreme storms. 

Through the weekend of January 7, water levels in Crystal Springs Reservoir are not expected to reach the dam spillway. However, during the week of January 9, there is currently an approximately 25% chance that water may reach the dam’s spillway during one of the succeeding storm events. In such cases of extreme weather that is outside of our control, water flowing into the reservoir would flow out of the reservoir via the dam’s spillway, which would increase flows in San Mateo Creek. Visit SFPUC’s web page at www.sfpuc.org/PeninsulaReservoirWetWeather for more information and updates.

Remember back in June when we went to Stage 2 water restrictions?  Now the water is headed out to the Bay.  Recall also when Dr. Newsha Ajami, Director of Urban Water Policy, Stanford's Water in the West Program noted the state "has already built reservoirs where they work best" and that we should be transitioning to groundwater storage going forward?  Can't come one water year too soon, but is anyone actually working on it or are we just focused on "sea-level rise" and the parcel taxes needed to pay for the walls?

Update 1/16:  I seldom watch TV news but this came on right after the football game and I had been hoping to find a photo of the Hwy 92 sink hole.  Here it is

Caltrain: Dirty little secret revealed

The Daily Post enlightened us yesterday with a frontpage piece on the railroad bridge between Menlo Park and Palo Alto that needs to be replaced ASAP.  The steel bridge is 120 years old and could crack at any time, said Rob Barnard, Caltrain's deputy chief of rail development.  The ugly part of the story is the schedule and impact on operations.  Here are some snippets from the piece:

Caltrain will get to work on designing the bridge at the end of 2024.  Caltrain will come up with a preferred method for replacing the bridge over San Francisquito Creek by 2025, Barnard said.  Steel from the bridge was sent to a lab to be analyzed for strength and composition.  The study found that the bridge is not in imminent danger of collapse, and there are no cracks.  The bridge must be replaced by 2033, and the project will take nine years in total, Barnard said.

Trains won't be able to cross the bridge during two years of construction, Barnard said.  Caltrain may have to run fleets of busses between the Palo Alto station and the Menlo Park station so people can still ride the train, he said.  The "bus bridge" would have to move hundreds of people during the peak hours, so the logistics would be very complicated, Barnard said.

Wanna bet?  This project and two years of off-the-train-on-the-bus-off-the-bus-on-the-train will kill commuter ridership.  It will be a complete mess and everyone will be back in their cars for any trip that crosses the creek.  All of the on-going electrification work and supposed faster service will not bolster ridership until 2033 as the absolute best-case scenario--and when does the best-case ever play out on these projects?  It turns out they are already holding Caltrains off the bridge when a Union Pacific freighter is coming so there aren't two trains on the bridge at the same time.  I see the finances bleeding red and another sales tax and/or bond measure on the horizon. 

RIP: Sea level rise parcel tax

Let's take a moment to reflect on the demise, at least for now, of the County parcel tax that was aimed at funding to protect from sea level rise.  As the Daily Journal reported:

A parcel tax measure meant to back San Mateo County’s climate initiatives won’t appear on the November ballot after officials realized economic uncertainty was causing low polling support for the measure.

“A lot of this is a reflection of where we are with the economy — rising gas prices, inflation, the possibility of a recession. I think people are really concerned,” County Manager Mike Callagy said. “We really hope that someday we’ll be able to bring this back around in better times because these are situations that are not going to get better and are only going to get worse.”

While the Daily Post dug a little deeper and stated it bluntly under the headline "County tax didn't stand a chance;  Poll data shows it would have failed by 11 points".  The Post noted

The tax would have cost property owners 5 cents per square foot annually.  For the owner of a 2,000 square-foot-home, the tax would have cost $100 per year.  Poll respondents did express interest in some of the ideas behind the tax--primarily around reducing the impacts of drought by recycling water and reducing flammable brush.

Translation:  Hey County, please worry about things that are right here, right now and not something that may or may not happen 50 years from now.  Oh, and do it within the huge budget you have now.

Today's Chron has a long piece on "graywater" that you can get from recycling what comes out of the washing machine and your shower.

The technology isn’t new — greywater systems have been around for decades. But experts note that California, a state long familiar with extreme drought, still doesn’t have statewide incentives for people to install systems that can save thousands of gallons of water each year for a family of four.  On a local level, incentives are not robust in the Bay Area either. Santa Clara County offers a $400 rebate through Valley Water, San Francisco offers $225, Contra Costa County and the East Bay Municipal District each offer up to $50, and other counties and water districts offer none at all.

Another benefit: Using greywater means people can continue to grow plants and trees in their yard — which can provide food and shade and support wildlife — rather than ripping them out in the face of water restrictions, advocates said.  But while greywater has been shown to save both water and money, advocates and experts note that it’s faced a number of challenges to more widespread adoption over the years.

It goes on to discuss the permit process and costs, the lack of experienced installers, whether the water utilities really want us to do it and a general lack of public awareness -- all things the County could actually work on within the bounds of its current budget and staff.  In the meantime, we have a little respite from yet another parcel tax.

Local real estate update - The Ups & Downs

Two tidbits of B'game real estate news came in today from Zumper and the County assessor's office.  First the Zumper rental update shows B'game in the middle of the pack at $2,300 for a one-bedroom--up 1.82% year-over-year.  Two-bedrooms were a bit of a surprise with average rent off 11.6% at $2,830.  That's the only noticeable decline of all 20 cities surveyed.  Not sure what is going on, but the wave of For Rent signs on El Camino has subsided a bit yet there are still many available.  It's a good thing we don't have rent control.

On the assessed property value side, the DJ is reporting

San Mateo County’s property assessment roll increased year over year by $22.2 billion, or 8.34%, to a record high of over $288 billion in assessed value, San Mateo County Assessor Mark Church announced Tuesday.  San Carlos had an increase of 12.64%, South San Francisco was up 12.53%, Burlingame saw a hike of 10.77%, Millbrae increased 9.43% and East Palo Alto was up 9.29%.

The property tax revenue generated is approximately 1% of the annual property assessment roll and this year will increase to $2.88 billion. Approximately 45% of the revenue will go to schools within the county, 25% to the county, 18% to cities, 10% to special districts and 2% to former redevelopment agencies.

One factor in the growth of the San Mateo County secured roll is new commercial development. In all, 64.6 million square feet of new construction are expected to be completed in the county over the next six to eight years. A total of 9.12 million square feet are under construction, 13.9 million square feet have planning approval, and 41.6 million square feet are under review. Approximately 17 million square feet of new construction have been completed in the last five years, according to the Assessor’s Office.

That puts numbers to our collective amnesia about the drought.  And who knows, a lot of this new real estate may be underwater as John Horgan notes in his column:

According to Dave Pine, chair of the OneShoreline Board of Directors and a member of the county’s Board of Supervisors, projects to counter climate change along the shore could take decades to finish.  And, even then, they might not be enough to ward off the worst aspects of what could be coming. “This will take generations,” he predicted.  To that end, OneShoreline and the county are examining the need for an ultralong-term parcel tax to help to finance the myriad construction efforts under discussion.

You knew where that was headed, right?

Sheriff Election Funding

I try not to get all wrapped up in how much money any candidate has in any race--at least until the end when the tally is in and the expenditure per vote garnered can be calculated.  The only other interesting thing for me is where the donations originate.  The Daily Post injected this little tidbit into its County sheriff campaign funding article on Monday.

That is some "help" and you have to love the group's plural name Citizens for Christina Corpus.   This earns a big Voice "what's up with that?"

Do we have enough "military" equipment?

Headlines can be deceiving.  They can be especially deceiving is there is no subsequent context given.  And they can be more deceiving when some are playing politics with the headline.  So it was for me on Wednesday when the top-of-fold front page of the Daily Journal blared "Sheriff's Office details $2M in military equipment".  The usual suspects in the defund, defang the police movement jumped all over it, but I was left to ask, "Is that a lot or not enough?"  Hard to say.  The DJ notes

The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office released its first annual Military Equipment Use Policy, detailing the more than $2 million worth of equipment in its ownership as part of a state mandate process aimed at expanding transparency around the stock of military-grade weapons held by any given jurisdiction.   During the required update from the Sheriff’s Office on the policy, Allen noted the Sheriff’s Office does not currently own any equipment directly handed down by the military or that is from companies who supply the military with equipment.

But the department does own equipment that falls under what the state defines as military equipment, based on interpretations of Assembly Bill 481, which took effect this January. In total, acquiring and maintaining the equipment has cost the department more than $2 million.

So it would have been nice to see the headline use "military" in quotes like I did above. If you click through to the article I'm not the only one questioning the terminology, but the piece is helpful in that it details the gear

According to the report, the county currently owns:

• a Lanco Bearcat armed vehicle
• a mobile command vehicle
• two bean bag launchers and bean bag munition
• three bomb squad robots
• four .50 caliber semi-automatic rifles and ammunition
• four 37 millimeter tear gas launchers and tear gas grenades
• 10 pepperball launchers
• 11 drones
• 41 stingball grenades, 42 flashbang devices and 114 less-lethal launchers used to fire rounds of soft rubber bullets.

“This equipment is necessary because there are no reasonable alternatives that can achieve the same objective of officer and civilian safety,” Sheriff Carlos Bolanos said.

In search of some context, I reminded myself that the County is about 450 square miles and has about three-quarters of a million residents.  It's home to a decent chunk of Silicon Valley tech offices and data centers.  Bio tech, including labs, is booming in the County so much that San Carlos just put a moratorium on new bio building applications.  We've got a lot of potential targets.  And as I look at the list, you would be hard-pressed to make a decent Schwarzenegger movie with what we have.  One Bearcat for the whole County?  One mobile command vehicle?  It seems to me AB 481 that required releasing this info "for transparency" may be causing too much transparency to all the wrong people.  Let's hope not.

U.S. Congress race: How the game is played

If you are a registered voter in the 14th Congressional district (i.e. ours) you probably got a pamphlet from Kevin Mullin's State Assembly office in the last day or two.  It's as innocuous as one could imagine, titled "At Your Service - A Guide to Constituent Services" and lists a bunch of state agencies phone numbers and websites--sort of like Google would render if asked.  It has standard pre-paid postage paid by the State of CA - meaning us.

Mr. Mullin is running against our councilor Emily Beach and supe David Canepa for the congressional seat being vacated by Jackie Speier.  The primary is June 7th.  You are seeing lawn signs pop up and now a non-political mailer lands with Mullin's office return address.  A month ago, the Post noted the fundraising back then as

Canepa $427,956
Beach $276,887
Mullin $245,204 including self-funding of $65K
Mattammal $16,416
Watters $10,000

Name recognition is going to be key since you would probably need a very small ruler to measure the total differences in any 20 positions between the three Democrats.  So expect more bits of mail, local newspaper articles written from candidates' press releases and whatever else they can think of to nurse the campaign funds into June.  Here is today's example of how the game is played, neighbor.

RHNA: How state law will mess up the County

The Daily Journal did a good job of summarizing the latest turn of the crank on "Regional Housing Needs Allocations" (Rhna) so let's just reiterate the numbers for future reference:

At the heart of state housing laws is the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA, which assigns housing growth to jurisdictions in eight-year cycles. While the law is nothing new, the upcoming cycle’s numbers (the sixth cycle in the law’s history) are larger than ever before and nearly three times those for the county’s current cycle.

Cities in San Mateo County will need to plan for a combined 44,800 new homes to be built over the next eight years.  With roughly 269,000 units of housing in the county and 2.8 people per home on average, the new housing could usher in upwards of 131,000 people, more growth than the county’s seen over the last 35 years. Combined with unincorporated land, the county’s total allocation for new homes is more than 47,000.

(Michael Lane, a state policy director with nonprofit public policy organization SPUR) said the big jump is "because of recent state legislation requiring new allocations be based on a more stringent look at housing affordability, job growth and vacancy rates.

“If they do fall behind, SB 35 will kick in. Hopefully that will speed up housing growth and bring some of those cities into compliance,” said Dylan Casey, executive director of the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, or CaRLA.  Senate Bill 35, a law that became enforceable at the beginning of the year, removed cities’ abilities to deny projects that contain below-market-rate units if goals are not being met.

So there you have it.  "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  If all you look at is "housing affordability, job growth and vacancy rates" then you come up with these ridiculous demands, backed by multiple state laws, that will further mess up the County.

And in other news today in the SF Chronicle titled "Feds’ Central Valley Project expects to send no water to most California farms this year, little to cities" we are reminded yet again that

After an extraordinarily dry start to the year, the federal government announced Wednesday that most farms in California will likely receive no water from the state’s biggest reservoirs in 2022, the latest fallout from drought and a blow to an agricultural industry already crippled by tight supplies. Cities and towns, meanwhile, will get just a fraction of the water they requested.

Municipal agencies that receive federal water, which include suppliers in the Bay Area, are projected to get just 25% of what they asked for in 2022. This includes Contra Costa Water District and Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves the city of San Jose. Last year, most urban customers got about half of what they wanted.

While San Mateo County isn't as reliant on the Feds for our water, the steady downward drip from 50% to 25% to whatever in Silicon Valley is completely predictable across the state.  "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  If you are stuck in a big hole, stop digging.

Bay Area Pavement: Who's Minding the Store?

Everyone knows that the road surface and drainage on El Camino Real is abysmal.  The monstrous project Caltrans is proposing to "fix" it is overkill as we noted here in July.  But what about all the other streets in B'game?  OK, I know, B'game doesn't have any streets--so what about our avenues, roads, places, and courts?  It's hard to tell since the Metropolitan Transportation Commission report on pavement is two years out of date.  The MTC provides this definition

The Pavement Conditions Index (PCI) provides a snapshot of the pavement health of a road. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 100 (where 100 means a newly paved road), and many factors affect a city’s or county’s PCI score. These include pavement age, climate and precipitation, traffic loads and available maintenance funding.

A new housing development with new streets may have a high overall PCI, while an older, urbanized area may have a much lower PCI, even though both are practicing pavement preservation.  At 67 out of a possible 100 points, the region’s average PCI score is much closer to the 60-point threshold at which deterioration accelerates rapidly.

And a moving three year average makes sense as both wear and tear and repair are continuous.  "Good" is a PCI in the '70's and that is where we were--two years ago--77.  Since then it appears there has been radio silence from the MTC.  What's up with that?  It's not like monitoring road surfaces is a desk job in some closed-for-Covid office. 

                                           3 yr Moving Average PCI

                                Miles        2017    2018    2019

Burlingame             162.6         75         78         77

They are wallowing in cash and proclaim:

MTC directly distributes more than $1 billion a year to Bay Area transit agencies and other partners, and prioritizes requests from local agencies for millions more in limited state and federal funds.  Each year, the Commission allocates hundreds of millions of dollars for local streets and roads, highways, public transit, freight movement and bicycle/pedestrian facilities.

So how do they do it without the data?  Here is one of hundreds of sections of El Camino that must put it somewhere between Poor and At Risk PCI.  Just like your tires and rims.

Caltrain: Electrification Costs Spiral

I revisit the electrification story about once a year and the situation never seems to change--it is taking longer than expected, costing more than expected and the duration and total costs are still unknown; as is the money source.  Here are some snippets from the DJ article:

Following the Friday announcement of additional cost overruns for Caltrain’s electrification modernization project, its board has authorized spending increases to ensure its completion, despite concerns over where funding will materialize.  Caltrain’s electrification project faces $462 million in additional costs following its settlement agreement with contractor Balfour Beatty Infrastructure, higher than its initial June estimate of $333 million.  COVID-19 related delays, utility issues and real estate have also played a role in increasing costs, Caltrain staff said.

Board Member Steve Heminger supported the additional funding for the project. However, he cautioned the board to prepare for the worst when it comes to a funding strategy. Heminger noted only slightly more than half of the extra costs are known and covered through federal grants and Measure RR funds, with the rest still to be found.  It has received around $52.4 million from the federal government... Credit financing will cover another $150 million, with Measure RR capital reserve funding accounting for $60 million.

That last bit, using Measure RR funds, is controversial because the alternative is "relying on member agency funding".  "$100 million here, $100 million there, pretty soon you are talking about real money" to paraphrase C. Everett Dirksen.  You can guess what that means.  At least the catenary wires have arrived in B'game as seen here near B'way.  And the bulk of the work on this is above ground.  Keep that in mind at the El Camino Real project gets discussed.