The Burlingame Voice

Three Thoughts From Altitude

I had a lovely long stay in Tahoe this past week.  It's as good or better than in the winter even for an avid skier like me.  My wife and I hiked, golfed, friends have a boat that they shared and so one.  It's a great part of California.  As I rolled "down the hill" yesterday, three thoughts came to mind:

1.  Somehow a series of little towns and ski areas manage to put on more live music in a week than we see in B'game in a month or more.  It's sort of embarrassing.  I hear talk of "community" all the time in the Bay Area and yet Tahoe manages to quadruple the quality community time with seemingly little effort and great results.

2.  The livability problems in San Francisco are doing serious, probably permanent harm to its reputation as a world-class city.  The Wall Street Journal is one name-brand news source talking about the problems.  For example, this weekend it noted

The website RealtyHop.com dubs San Francisco “the doo-doo capital of the U.S.” They noted that the city’s poop reports almost tripled between 2011 and 2017.  The problem draws attention because the poop increasingly comes not from dogs but from humans.  There are myriad causes at work, no doubt. But there was no “defecation crisis”—a term usually associated with rural India—in the 1930s, even with unemployment at 25%, vagabonds roaming the country, and shantytowns and “Hoovervilles” springing up everywhere. Today’s homeless and the hobos of the Great Depression are different in many ways. 

In California at least, one is struck by the contrast between the fastidious attention paid to the social duty of scooping up and disposing of dog feces, and the rather more paralyzed and guilty reaction to the plague of human feces. The former is treated as a moral imperative among the enlightened—and the thin plastic bags used as the means to this moral end have so far escaped the fate of plastic straws, well on their way to being outlawed as an environmental outrage. Even social-justice warriors don’t consider it their personal duty, however, to tidy up after their fellow human beings on the streets.

For us locals that is hardly news, but what is news is that elsewhere in California (like Tahoe) long time nearby visitors to EssEff have stopped visiting.  We were paired up with a lovely older woman on the golf course who only waited until the second hole to note that she and her husband used to come to SF every month for 40 years for "dinner and a show" or museums and such.  No more.  One wonders how bad it has to get before the laissez-faire mindset gets whacked on the side of the head?

3.  Who's in charge of infrastructure?  It took three hours to drive from Tahoe City (on the North shore) to Berkeley-- about 190 miles.  That's pretty much the usual time without winter weather.  Then it takes more than an hour to go the last 37 miles to Burlingame on a sunny weekend afternoon with the Giants out of town.  Where are the environmentalists decrying the air pollution of thousands of cars idling in traffic?  Where are the transit officials with new ideas?  Where are the housing advocates smart enough to see the cart might be in front of the horse?  Did all of the urban planner decamp for Boise or Spokane?  Just wondering.  

  

Ferrying Commuters to B'game?

A letter to the Daily Journal reminded me of a longstanding discussion about having ferry service to the B'game Bayfront.  A local resident named Orhan Kurt writes:

Regarding the idea of ferry terminals, my friends and I here in Burlingame are shocked to watch as Foster City aggressively pushes to be the regional hub and to be part of the upcoming Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) study (June 17 edition of the Daily Journal).

Why does Burlingame wait on the sidelines? A regional hub should be right next to SFO.  Burlingame has officially recognized the need and accepted the ferry hub concept for Burlingame as was approved in the latest general plan. So where is the follow-up Burlingame?  Our own general plan consultants have encouraged us to connect the rail and SFO to the ferry system.

This seems like a) a no-brainer to decide to do and b) pretty easy given what we already have at the Bayfront right next to the Facebook/Oculus complex under construction.  Check out this landing option that used to house The Sherman.  Mr. Kurt may be expanding on what the General Plan says deep on page 154

M-4.8  Water-Based Transportation

Consider emerging water-based transportation options to improve multimodal access options to the Bayfront.  [AC, SO}

But he's on the right track, or is it tack?

Scott Weiner Comes to Burlingame

Two weeks after state senator Scott Weiner’s visit to Burlingame I am still marveling at how smoothly he can speak out of both sides of his mouth in a single meeting.  Weiner was invited to the Lane Room by Thrive which is a consortium of non-profit organizations.  He was invited to discuss the problems non-profits are having retaining staff as the cost of housing rises.  Weiner’s Senate Bill 50, discussed here and here, appeared to be popular with some in the audience of about 60 people.

In an interview by Samaritan House CEO, Bart Charlow, Weiner comes off as a tall, skinny, somewhat geeky attorney with a heart of gold.  He’s a man on a valiant mission.  Yet I saw in him a streak of progressive fascism interested only in consolidating power in Sacramento by any means necessary.  After describing the “carnage” that is happening in California and is “hollowing out even the middle class”, he excoriated the “No Growth” people for “adopting progressive talking points” such as “we need to build only affordable housing”.  He believes that will never happen without market-rate housing to subsidize it, but others think differently.  To him, it is better to demolish the concept of R1 zoning in the six most populous counties in the state via SB50 thus hurting the middle class homeowners who rely on their single-family homes as their largest investment.  Weiner’s claim that “this is not about getting rid of single-family homes” rang hollow after he said “single-family homes are a ban on affordable housing”.

When asked about SB50 excluding less populous counties, particularly Marin County, Weiner spoke “bluntly” about needing to do that to get the bill through a Senate committee headed by a Marin senator.  So much for principles of “fairness” that one hears so much about from progressives.

When asked about the housing quotas cities have been given (known as the RHNA formula), Weiner complained about how the formula has been gamed by some cities and two-thirds of cities don’t meet their low-income targets.  It didn’t seem to occur to him that perhaps that state-imposed process should be fixed by the state Legislature.  Better to scrap the whole idea of city zoning and let anyone build anything anywhere.  Nice leadership.

Someone other than me asked Weiner where all the water will come from?  He responded that “we have a structural deficiency” on water infrastructure and then made the ridiculous claim that “building housing doesn’t drive population growth” or water consumption.  He really said that.  After the obligatory comments on low-flow toilets and water reuse (“we are way behind Australia and Israel”), one was left to wonder how he would keep the middle-class in California without consuming more water.  It must be nice to live in the fairyland of the state senate and not have to worry about fixing “structural deficiencies” before plunging ahead with massive growth laws.

When asked about the impact that AirBnB and VRBO have on permanent rental housing and whether something should be done to limit those businesses, Weiner magically turned into a private property rights advocate.  He didn’t even seem embarrassed by the switch.  He then proceeded to say that “cities have ample tools to ban or restrict” AirBnB, yet he’s quite comfortable completely overriding these same cities’ zoning ordinances.  I almost had to admire such blatant hypocrisy spilling out in a single meeting.

The most revealing comment of the 90-minute session was buried in one of Weiner’s asides about Area Median Income (AMI) ranges and which income range was most “deserving” of subsidies.  He noted that this was a problem until we tackle “the long-term project to realign our capitalist society and socialize housing”.  There you have it.

Living Next to 101 and SFO

I originally missed this big item on the Planning Commission agenda and in the Daily Journal piece.  

Burlingame officials praised the initial designs of a 265-unit, mixed-use project expected to be the first sizable development constructed in a newly-planned neighborhood.  Burlingame planning commissioners shared their support for the residential and commercial proposal by Summerhill Apartment Communities on the corner of Adrian Court and Adrian Road, according to video of the meeting Monday, May 13.

The project comprised of two, seven-story towers is likely to be the first housing development in the area around Rollins Road, where officials are seeking to build a new residential hub a short distance from the Millbrae train station.

For people (like me) steeped in the history of the telecommunications industry, One Adrian Ct. is an historic property being the first "Technical Operating Center" or TOC for the original SP Telecom network that grew out of the Southern Pacific railroad right of way and evolved into Sprint.  The microwave tower is still on site that provided the original transmission facilities that were later replaced by fiber optics.  More importantly, I have to wonder who is looking at the bigger picture.  The DJ goes on to note

Most of the feedback was similarly positive, but some maintained reservations. One nearby property owner said he feared the traffic and congestion likely invited by the development.

The initial design with 333 bedrooms includes 315 parking spaces so it is "under-parked" like most recent designs but that figure gives you some sense of the traffic from the residents.  You have to wonder what the impact will be on the very busy intersection that has the In-and-Out burger shack along with other traffic generators.  Another question that should be addressed is which elementary school will the kids go to?  Franklin or Lincoln?  The residents will also get a front-row seat to the runway noise from SFO--maybe this is the noise barrier the rest of us have been longing for?   Yes, I'm being sarcastic.

Planning Climate Action in B'game

The climate action planning continues in B'game.  Here are some of the tangible activities courtesy of the Daily Journal reporting on the Joint Council-Planning Commission meeting last month:

Officials are crafting the proposal in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the coming two decades through improved mobility routes, more efficient development practices, natural resource conservation and more.  Among the most notable programs and practices identified to cut greenhouse gas emissions are:

• implementing a transportation demand management plan
• establishing a complete streets network
• adopting more efficient construction management
• becoming more energy efficient and
• supporting Peninsula Clean Energy

We will have to see just how tangible these become in the face of potential mass over-development driven by Senate Bill 50 (if it becomes law).

SB50: Some Legal Background

As Senate Bill 50 winds its way out of committee heading for a vote in the Senate the mayor of Menlo Park, Ray Mueller, who is also an attorney provided a short history of zoning law and precedent to the Daily Post this week.  I'll just trim it down to the key points here

In many ways SB50 is the history of zoning and land-use regulation come full circle and turned on its head.  In 1926, the U.S. Supreme Court, in it landmark decision Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., for the first time validated a local jurisdiction's comprehensive land-use zoning controls.  The case involved a village in Ohio, Euclid, developing local zoning ordinances in an attempt to prevent industrial Cleveland from growing into and subsuming Euclid and changing the character of the village.  In this case, the Supreme Court upheld Euclid's zoning ordinance, finding it was not an unreasonable extension of the village's police power and did not have the character of arbitrariness, and thus was not unconstitutional.  How ironic is it then, that a legislator from a big city in California drafted SB50 to use state pre-emption to forcefully impose zoning rules to push character changing density into the suburbs.

The Euclid case was the beginning of nearly a century of land-use law in the U.S. and California that was premised on the foundation that local jurisdictions were vested with the power to regulate land use within their boundaries.

For close to a century in California, when a family picked a jurisdiction in which to make the biggest financial investment in their lives, their home, it was premised on the belief that they did so in a framework of property rights vested in an expectation they would participate in a locally elected representative government that controlled the land-use destiny of that jurisdiction: from its downtown, to its parks and open space, to it schools and fire stations, to the character of the street of the home that family purchased and children played on.

Very well put, Mr. Mueller.  Our own mayor, Donna Colson, was quoted in the DJ yesterday predicting that "I think we will waste a lot of money on lawyers".  I agree.  With the wide, ugly grasp of SB50 there should be no problem coming up with a 20-city war chest to fight this as far as needed.  Would it be a waste of taxpayer money?  Sure, but it would also be necessary.  It's time to start that reserve fund in the budget.  We will have a long memory of those politicians who attempt to jam this down our throats.

Health Care District Land Use

It's been three and a half years since we touched on hospital redevelopment in any substantive way here.  That post from 2015 notes

The Burlingame City Council will address during a meeting Monday, Sept. 21, a proposal to get a head start on the environmental review of a project which could bring as many as 250 housing units to an approximately 8-acre site near the intersection of Trousdale Drive and Marco Polo Way.

Today's DJ has a letter to the editor addressing said need that I have excerpted here

Open letter to the Peninsula Health Care District Board

We write this letter as clergy in San Mateo County in relation to your role as custodians of a precious parcel of publicly owned land.  We have a collective responsibility to ensure that vital conditions for well-being are available to all in society.

In that spirit we are asking you to reconsider your vision for the use of the Trousdale land. This publicly owned parcel represents an opportunity — even more so one that carries with it a moral responsibility — to provide as many seniors as possible an affordable place to live.

We call upon you to immediately pause and consider options that will enable more affordable rental apartments to be built on the land. Alternatives to market rate housing are possible — they must be vigorously explored — and we all share a responsibility in doing what we can to provide quality of life for our seniors who call this home.

The Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon; Congregational Church of San Mateo

Rabbi Marvin Goodman; Peninsula Sinai Congregation, Foster City

Pastor Holly Hillman; Burlingame United Methodist Church

I haven't followed what has transpired since the early EIR on 250 units--if anything at all has transpired.  But I will say, that is a lot of units regardless of who lives in them.  As Millbrae goes way overboard on development around the BART- Caltrain station, another 250 units has the potential to turn the north end into a congested mess.  I hope the clergy aren't advocating for even more than that and would ask that they consider the effects on everyone as they back into the planning business.

SB50: The 'Drop Zone' in B'game

Yesterday's SF Chronicle piece "SF supervisors oppose Wiener's new housing-near-transit bill, but there's wiggle room" captures some of the many concerns about SB50.  We started the discussion here noting that another SF politician, David Chiu, decided it was good politics to point fingers at Burlingame.  One SF Supervisor, Vallie Brown, joined the "ruin other people's backyard" movement by saying “We need bold proposals, and not just here. We need to have the rest of the Bay Area and California get into gear around housing".  Talk about exceeding one's authority.  But most of the SF supervisors appear ready to vote for a resolution opposed to SB50.  Now if only our own San Mateo County supervisors had as much backbone.  But so far they haven't demonstrated it.  Today's Comicle editorial tries to paint even the SF supervisors as some sort of "reactionary" body--good luck with that laughable assertion:

In the long fight to keep California’s wealthy, homogeneous, exclusive suburbs just the way they are, Palo Alto and Beverly Hills have an ally they might not have expected: San Francisco.  The city’s Board of Supervisors — thanks to its purportedly progressive faction, no less — is poised to reiterate its reactionary resistance to legislation that would legalize higher-density residential development near mass transit amid a crushing housing shortage.

For many locals the threat is still abstract, so here is a map showing the affected sections of B'game should SB50 become law--I call it the SB50 Drop Zone

Lest you think it is bad enough that some hack politicians from the city who cannot even manage their own streets in a first-world fashion want to co-opt approval of development in more than half of B'game; the last part of SB50 says a city that is "employment rich" can't stop development anywhere in town.  Don't get too comfortable up in the hills.  Our City Council has taken a clear stance against SB50 and should be encouraged as they have been by two letters in today's Daily Journal here and here.  To buttress their good instincts, they should consider starting a legal reserve fund since this is likely to end up in court if it passes in Sacramento.  It might also be time to reconsider whether SamTrans should be allowed to operate on our section of El Camino Real.  That sounds crazy to say about a state highway, but it's not any crazier than Weiner, Chiu and Brown telling us we have to build five-story tall high-density housing everywhere in town.

Changes to Lyon-Hoag

We've been following the oncoming future of the Lyon-Hoag neighborhood for quite some time including here and here.  This might be the section of town undergoing the most change--at least until the up-zoning in the North end happens.  Regardless of how long the changes have been in the making, it's still a shock to many.  I needed a tow recently and the tow truck driver who has been doing that job for almost 30 years couldn't believe that Hower Auto had closed and that the Datsunville building had been sold and was likely closing.  At least Washington School is getting some new permanent classrooms as the population of kids is likely to jump once again with all of the development coming.

And don't expect the pressure to subside.  Beyond Facebook and the crazy CASA Compact is another wave of price pressure from the next wave of Bay Area IPOs.  The Wall Street Journal notes

Friday’s strong public-market debut of ride-hailing company Lyft Inc., now valued at roughly $30 billion, is expected to kick off a rush of massive IPOs that include competitor Uber and digital-imaging company Pinterest, supplying the Bay Area with possibly thousands of new millionaires.  What sets this IPO season apart from previous offerings is the sheer volume of workers expected to benefit from the bonanza and its impact on the Bay Area, already strained by a growing class divide fueled by the years-long tech boom.

One early Uber employee, who is currently living in a rental apartment with their spouse and sold about half of their shares during an internal sale, said they had been eyeing single-family homes in the city. But that even with a budget of $4 million to $5 million, they didn’t feel they could manage carrying costs and private school for their future children. They are now looking at homes in San Francisco’s suburbs farther south.

The eternal question is whether B'game and our neighboring towns will end up as an expanse of offices, housing and restaurants and nail salons with little in the way of small services like independent auto repair, mom and pop retail, entertainment venues or anything unique from any other suburbia?  Plenty of B'gamers fear the worst about that homogenization and the traffic with the most common question today being "If you decide to go, where would you go?" not generating a satisfactory answer very often.  Here's the Washington addition and the last view of Hower.

SB50: Mi CASA no es tu CASA

Senate Bill 50 is the latest in a long line of bad ideas put forth by myopic politicians who cannot stand that some communities have different priorities than others.  That myopia is compounded by feelings of envy over perceived "inequality" and the self-righteous do-gooder, YIMBY mentality.  It's further compounded by politicians who have no qualms about reaching for Other People's Money (OPM).  Current case in point is Assemblyman David Chiu and his bill AB1487 that would create yet another regional agency to search for OPM to fund affordable housing.  As the SF Chronicle piece about the bill notes:

But the notion of a new agency and more taxes infuriates some city leaders who say the government is running roughshod over local control.  Residents often object to new development, saying it mars the look and feel of their communities.  The region is tightly interconnected, Chiu said, so a city council obstructing development in Burlingame puts pressure on Oakland and San Francisco. And, ultimately, the effects ripple, creating a severe economic split between homeowners and renters, and older and younger generations.

The finger-pointing at Burlingame might be because of Mayor Colson recent piece on local actions and the importance of local control which was much better thought out that anything Chiu has ever proposed.  You won't see the Burlingame reference in the on-line piece, but it was right there in the March 8 print edition.  Perhaps some editor thought better of stirring up this 'burb too much?  Here are some points from Donna Colson's Daily Journal piece:

Last month the Metropolitan Transit Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments presented the CASA Compact, a 15-year policy package to confront the Bay Area housing shortage. The compact presents a 10-point plan for housing production, preservation and renters’ protections that was developed by a group of mainly non-elected, self-interested housing industry and policy advocates.

San Mateo County communities had no voice in the CASA Compact process. Not a single elected from San Mateo County was included on the leadership team, steering committee or technical committee which is frustrating as many small cities were already taking the initiative to craft viable housing solutions for their communities. Some cities are allowing teacher housing, others are embracing renters protections to limit gentrification, while some, like Burlingame, are updating their general plans to allow for up to 20 percent more growth near transit while protecting the character of existing single-family neighborhoods.

So where is all of this headed.  Going back to the Chronicle article:

It’s still unclear what will happen if cities refuse to build. Right now there is no real mechanism for the state to override local land-use authority. When Newsom proposed withholding transportation dollars from cities that don’t meet their housing targets, he ignited a political flame war.

It comes down to what the build-build-build politicians think they can get away with using OPM and political pressure.  Small minds like Chiu have no problem attributing their failure to manage growth to other communities, but cannot see that they are most of the problem.  Any one who thinks we can build our way out of costly housing without real restraints on commercial development doesn't understand economics or the intrinsic attractiveness of the Bay Area for businesses in our predominant industries of high-tech and biotech.  Build it and they will come, especially if the government is subsidizing the housing cost equation.  Here is the print version calling out B'game.