The Burlingame Voice

Au Revoir, City Attorney

The Daily Journal did a quick little blurb on B'game city attorney Kathleen Kane moving on to a new role with MTC-ABAG.  I want to add some context since many people do not realize how important the city attorney is to city operations.  The city council and staff are constantly faced with decisions that have legal implications and municipal law is perhaps more convoluted than "regular" law.  I'm not an attorney--that is just my observation from interacting with past attorneys Larry Anderson and Gus Guinan as well as a little with Kathleen Kane.  Having a steady hand in the attorney's chair is key to balancing lawyers' predisposition towards protectiveness and not going overboard with too much care.

We have benefited from seven years of Kathleen's experience.  As she departs, I hope that having spent so much time guiding our city council in trying to implement some of ABAG's overly aggressive development ideas without ruining our quality of life will allow her to guide ABAG to a better understanding.  She's had a good run here and I wish her well.

Carl Nolte Speaks Up

"Native Son" columnist from the SF Chronicle Carl Nolte is one of the few bright spots in that paper.  Every once in awhile he lets an idea slip that only his seniority allows to slip past the editors.  Yesterday was a good example of this.  His column "Meditation on an Orange Sky" contains this observation

I think we have exceeded the natural carrying capacity of the place we call California. We have nearly 40 million people now, and maybe that’s too many. We’ve built towns into the edges of forests. We’ve tamed the rivers, moved the natural flow of the streams so we can live in what used to be deserts, and grow crops on what used to be dry range. We’ve built cities on top of earthquake faults.

We’ve built California into the fifth-largest economy in the world, a nation state, as Gavin Newsom likes to call it. Maybe we’ve gone too far. Maybe it’s too much.

Maybe it is, or at least maybe it is until we get some better governance and better pragmatism from our "leaders".  If they focused on making things work better instead of so many warm and fuzzy hoped-for goals, we would all be better off.  I hope Nolte doesn't get eased out the door at the Chron. 

The Voice Blog at 17

Today is the 17th anniversary of the Burlingame Voice blog.  Our original paper editions were hand-delivered to front porches a few times per year, but the move on-line in 2003 brought more immediacy and added interactivity--attributes we take for granted today.

The list of Categories (found on the right hand frame) has expanded as a means of tracking the conversations on specific topics and, of course, there is always Google or Duck Duck Go if you want to go way back in time.  That degree of referentiality and the back-linking it enables is a clear differentiation from other on-line resources.  When coupled with our laser focus on Burlingame issues, only crossing the border when the local impact might be felt, and the option of anonymity we allow makes for an informative and fun forum.  At least we hope so.  The rising readership numbers (particularly as the pandemic has increased everyone's screen time) would seem to support that view.

So blog on, we'll be here.  Happy 17th Anniversary.

Peninsula Hospital: Risky Place to Be

Unfortunately I needed to go to the ER at Peninsula hospital last week.  Fortunately the care I received once I got in to see the doc and the nurse was great.  But the hour spent in the ER lobby left me feeling very unsettled--and not because of the laceration I was there to get treated.  It was apparently a busy time according to the staff comments.  There were at least a dozen people and sometimes more than 15 waiting.  The chairs (which I did not use) were somewhat haphazardly spaced and easily moved around.  There was no painter's tape on the floor, no plastic sheeting or Plexiglas dividers anywhere.  No bottles of sanitizer and towels for DIY cleaning like the grocery stores have for their carts.  Certainly no one came through to clean in the hour I was there.  Even putting Covid concerns aside (which none of us should do) there were several people who appeared quite sick, coughing and barely masked.

What's up with that?  If any restaurant in town tried that it would be taken to task immediately.  I have asked, via the email feedback form, to talk with someone in a position of authority about it, but no response in three or four days.  If you have to go--be very careful--unlike if you went to the barbershop on Park Rd. acroos from the old Post Office for example.

  

Pandemic Tipping Point?

We tracked the Covid-19 numbers for the last six weeks here.  That was entirely in the SIP timeframe, but things are loosening up in multiple directions now.  Restaurants are reopening for dine-in service, non-essential stores are allowing limited numbers of people at a time, and churches are resuming live services; outdoors and with waivers in some cases.  Essential stores are pretty crowded; Lowe's for example.  The county as had several large demonstrations where social distancing was ignored.  It feels like we might be at a tipping point in the coming week or two, so here are the baseline figures today from the county site at SMChealth.org.

In our county of 759,000 people 46,480 have been tested (about 6%).  The positivity rate has been declining and is now 5.4% -- meaning we have either 2,528 or 2,553 cases --both numbers appear on the same data page.  That's about 335 cases per 100,000.  NYC has 2,460 cases per 100,000--more than seven times as many.  The age distribution of cases in San Mateo County has shifted to younger people with 50% being in their 20's, 30's and 40's.

Let's see how things look again in a week.

Arson at the Library, War Zone on the Ave.

Just as things were reverting to a highly-modified normal (an oxymoron if ever there was one) we get hit with the triple whammy of an arson event at the main library and a warning from BPD to shop owners to take necessary precautions against vandalism and looting.  Then a two-night county-wide curfew went into effect.  When the Ring Neighborhood alert came in yesterday about a fire in the 400 block of Primrose, I got worried.  Fortunately, as you see below, the fire appears to be just umbrellas in front of the library, not the library itself.  BPD made an arrest of a 45 year old, white male and I'm sure there will be more information to follow.

The scene on the Avenue is really disappointing.  Many shops were just reopening or announced that they will in the coming week.  The precautionary boarding up of windows certainly won't induce people to return soon and the restaurants that have been barely eking by on take-out will have to absorb even more stress.  Anyone who thinks this will somehow cure what ails our society is mistaken.

Social Media and City Government

We're nothing if not responsive here at the Voice so when we get a request from a reader we try to accommodate it.  Fortunately Paloma Ave.'s request for a post on government censorship at the local level is something we've been thinking about.  I feel for city officials trying to maintain media contact, take in requests and comments in a modern fashion and yet having to maintain some on-line decorum.  It's not like we haven't had to deal with the same thing here for 17 years.  We want vigorous discussion and debate and that comes in many forms and temperatures.

Under the heading of "City Addresses Rumor With Fact" on the City website is the "For the Record" page.   Aside from burlingame.org, the City also monitors SeeClickFix via the AccessBurlingame module.  That is where Paloma Ave.'s concern about shutting down conversation originated.

Please post a new thread about "Censorship at Access Burlingame". Here is the thread: 1399 Broadway Burlingame

DESCRIPTION We have run into this street creature periodically around town. She can be remarkably obnoxious, asking for money or asking passers-by to purchase alcohol for her (apparently she is not welcomed in many of the stores around Burlingame). She has great command of vulgarity. We've been yelled at.

I'll paste the rest of the comment into a comment on this thread.  At issue is the notation from the Police Chief (verified official) shutting down the thread for inappropriate language.  The issue of Shirley's behavior on Broadway goes back more than a decade, so perhaps we are working up to a better solution now that it's getting more visibility via social media.  I'd hate for it to get to the point where someone gets hurt and we all look in the rear view mirror and ask "Why?"

Tracking the Curve in Context

I've been looking for ways to illustrate the infection case rate in the County since that is most pertinent to us here in B'game (verses the state, the country, New York City or whatever). Try this local comparison on for size.

The County has 766,573 residents.  PacBell-AT&T- now Oracle Park, home of the SF Giants, holds 40,800 people. So if the Giants sold-out 18 games and the 19th game sold three quarters of the seats that would be everyone in the County going to one game. According to Wikipedia, there are "1,500 club seats at the field level behind home plate". If we get around a dozen new cases per day over the next month that the Shelter-in-Place is in effect, the total cases would just fill the Field Club section at Oracle once. That's not once per game--just once. Just some perspective on today's total case count of 1,177.

It also reminds me how much I miss Major League baseball and the local BYBA and BHS games.  As the County relaxes some of the outdoor restrictions we need to keep up the SIP discipline, but it may not be obvious how to balance reopening with the impending economic hardships.

   

Covid-19 Tracking and Planning

It's time to start a new thread on our tracking of the coronavirus.  You can see the prior post from March 24th and the path of the virus' growth in the County here.  Today's County report at SMChealth.org shows 16 new cases in the County for a total of 767.  67 cases are currently in hospital and 7,295 total tests have been done with a 10% positive ratio.  Recall there are about 769,000 people in the County so the testing rate is still minuscule.

There was a great human interest story in the Daily Journal yesterday about Officer Steve Vega.  I've chatted with the officer on the street before (the last time was in front of the Apple store during the on-going patrol there) and I'm thrilled to hear he is better.  He may be down at Stanford right now donating

After recovering from COVID-19, Burlingame police Officer Steve Vega is hoping the antibodies in his blood can be used to treat others infected with the disease.  Vega, 55, is among the first participants in a new effort by Stanford Blood Center to treat COVID-19 patients while the world waits for a vaccine to be developed.

The 22-year Burlingame officer is set to donate his plasma, the liquid in blood, at Stanford this Thursday and however many times is needed after that.

Also in the news is some data on how the work-at-home trend for self-isolating plays out across the economy.  Having worked full-time from home for more than a decade one article about the trials the newbies are discovering was gratifying to read.  On the data side, the Wall Street Journal has a piece titled "The Lucky Stay-at-home 37%"

A newly released study called “How Many Jobs Can Be Done at Home?” reckons that 37% of all U.S. jobs can plausibly be done at home, meaning that nearly two-thirds cannot. The study’s authors, from the University of Chicago’s Becker-Friedman Institute, add that their 37% estimate is at the “upper bound of what might be feasible.”  Along with other studies, this one also finds that those in jobs that can be done from home “typically earn more.” By their calculations, for example, 37% of jobs that can be done at home account for 46% of all wages.

Those who have stressed the need to get our economy up and running again are sometimes criticized for favoring profits over people. But the Becker-Friedman paper underscores that those lower down on the socio-economic scale are most in need of a re-opening for their livelihoods.

That's an important point that can be missed during the high-anxiety zeitgeist we are in.  Here is the Avenew showing that zeitgeist.

 

Green Policies Backfire Against the Coronavirus

I had my next post outlined in my head when I read this piece in today's Wall Street Journal by a couple of podcasters that says the same thing only better:

We really knew there was a crisis when San Francisco, which 13 years ago banned single-use plastic bags in grocery stores, would now prohibit reusable bags as part of its effort to prevent spread of the novel coronavirus.

Plastic-bag bans aren’t the only “green” policy that has been found wanting in the real world of a pandemic. For decades environmentalists have hectored us to get out of our cars and crowd into subways and buses. “From Amsterdam to Tempe, Arizona, more and more cities are finding that eliminating cars from their streets makes people happier and healthier,” Fast Company reported in January, noting with satisfaction that in one Helsinki neighborhood, “none of the new apartments come with parking.”

You can’t have a car-free community without high-density housing, so environmentalists have promoted apartment living and a war on suburban “sprawl.” But now those living in dense apartment buildings risk their lives by walking out the door into common spaces and shared surfaces, even before they reach the crowded, densely populated streets below. Suburban families, by contrast, are often able to maintain community connections even while socially distancing and are more likely to have additional room for their children to roam while out of school.

Environmentalists talk a lot about “externalities,” the unintended consequences of economic decisions. The pandemic is a reminder that policy decisions have externalities too.

Mr. McAleer and Ms. McElhinney host the podcast “The Ann & Phelim Scoop.”

The question is will we learn anything from the COVID-19 onslaught?  Let’s face it, this will not be the last pandemic.  We’ve had H1N1, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Russian Flu, Spanish Flu and the regular flu that mutates every year, so the vaccine manufacturers are half-guessing each year.   More than one person has said to me “Face it, we will look like Manhattan in 20 years.”  Well maybe, but maybe not.  Now is the time to tell Sen. Scott Weiner—the enemy of single-family zoning—and the YIMBYS to take a hike.