Month: October 2013

  • Tweet BPD

    From the county listserv we learn that tomorrow:

    On November 1, 2013, the Burlingame Police Department
    will take part in the 2nd Annual Global Police Tweet-a-thon. The Burlingame
    Police Department will be working in coordination with several other Bay Area
    law enforcement agencies in a working group known as Bay Area Law Enforcement
    Social Media Group (BALESMG). Law enforcement agencies worldwide will be
    conducting variations of tweets from the beat, virtual ride-a-longs, and
    information campaigns.  

    Last March, police departments participated in the first
    ever Global Tweet-a-thon, which included over 200 law enforcement agencies in
    10 countries, speaking 23 languages! During the 24-hour period, the
    participants in last year’s tweet-a-thon sent and shared 48,482 tweets. This
    time, we are hoping to increase the number of participating agencies and
    tweets.


    On November 1st, from 6 am to 6 pm follow us
    @BurlingamePD as we participate in the 2nd Annual Global Police Tweet-a-thon.
    Burlingame Police Department Corporal Dave Perna will be tweeting his activity
    during his duties patrolling the streets of Burlingame.       

    Sounds like it could be interesting.  If you have never done a physical ride-along, this is way easier!

     

  • Parking Parking Parking…Post Here

    OK, OK.  All right already.  People care about parking.  Few, if any, have the facts about downtown parking.  But they care.  So here is your thread.  We will start with a recap of a few astute comments from bloggers who are paying attention:

    Fred commenting on my comment (mine in quotes first):  

    "I cannot say I agree that we should be spending $30-$40 million on a downtown parking structure that we really don't need."

    The city keeps adding restaurants to the downtown without any additional parking and you don't think there is a need for more parking? How about six million and buy the post office and the post office parking lot. Reconfigure and add it to the lot that is there.

    Then, Scooter's response:

    All, I have heard many complaints about downtown parking. Did the current city council do any studies about the projected new employees and visitors to coming downtown and if the parking availability will improve?

    Yes.  The council and staff and TSpoon have studied it.  Additionally, my field survey results are here and the August attempt to do the same thing as this post is here.  I don't want to hear any grief on the field survey.  I went out with my pitch counting device and walked the Avenew myself counting all the way.  It is ACCURATE for the pre-streetscape count.

    New Category:  Parking.  Have at it!

  • FWB: Calpers’ New Approach

    Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to do a better job analyzing California issues than the local papers.  The October 28 edition had an Opinion piece complementing Calpers on its move to "reference pricing" for its beneficiaries looking for knee replacement surgery.  Without getting into too much detail (and no link since it is behind the paywall)

    Calpers was upset after noticing that it paid between $20,000 and $120,000 for the same procedure across the state, without commensurate differences in outcomes.  In January 2010, the retirement organization established a $30,000 reference-price limit on what it would pay. …..by the next year  Half of the high-price hospitals cut their rates, many by a considerable amount.  (Guess which number they were trying to hit).

    Maybe there is hope for this state after all………

  • FWB: SMUHSD Antes Up

    The Daily Journal has a piece on teacher negotiations that notes

    Teachers in the San Mateo Union High School District are getting a raise for the second year in a row, which the district says will help offset rising health care costs.  At a meeting Thursday night, the district voted 4-1 to give teachers a 5 percent raise for this school year, costing $2,367,500.

    Click through and read the whole piece to get a sense that the SMUHSD Trustees voting was not quite that strongly in favor.  And if I'm reading this Board page correctly, there was one absent or abstaining.

    Although Trustee Stephen Rogers voted in favor of the agreement, he takes issue with how the negotiation process is run. He said he couldn’t go into detail, as some of the process took place in closed session.

    “Our teachers do a great job,” Rogers said. “My disagreement was with how the process worked. There are a host of things we’ve got to get better on [for negotiations]. I wish the process was different, with some chances on both sides.

    I know at least one trustee reads the Voice regularly, so perhaps we can get just a bit more info.

     

     

  • 101 Signage – Not

    The Mercury News has a columnist we have featured before called Mr. Roadshow.  He answers questions on all things driving, street, freeway related.  I found this Q&A interesting from Wednesday's edition:

    Q I've noticed new electronic signs showing up along Whipple Avenue on both sides of the train tracks in Redwood City. Any idea what they'll be used for? We're clueless.

    A No Roadshow reader shall remain clueless. These are called "trailblazer" signs and are being installed as part of the San Mateo County Smart Corridors Project. They'll be used to guide traffic off Highway 101 in the event of an incident that requires detours from the freeway and onto predetermined alternates on local streets between El Camino Real and 101. The $35 million project should be completed soon and is one of several underway in Northern California.

    I'm not sure about spending $35 million on such a thing, but if the new signage doesn't just stay on all the time with a message like this (at El Camino, i.e. Highway 82! at Peninsula).  This sign is just plain ridiculous!

    IMG_0678

  • Wishful Thinking on Our Post Office

    I happened to come across a lovely example of adaptive reuse of a classic post office building that we B'gamers can only dream about.  The Willis Annenberg Center's website is here.  It notes on the About page that

    This new venue transforms a Beverly Hills city block, facing Santa Monica Boulevard, between Crescent and Canon Drives, into a vibrant new cultural destination with two distinct, elegant buildings: the historic 1933 Italianate-style Beverly Hills Post Office and the new, contemporary 500-seat, state-of-the-art Goldsmith Theater.

    Together these two structures embrace the city’s history and future, creating a new cultural landmark. Within the treasured Post Office, existing spaces are re-imagined into the 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater, a theater school for young people (opening in 2014), a café and gift shop.

    The problem is that with an exclusive negotiating agreement in place, something truly transformational for downtown is, well, excluded.

     

  • FWB: Paycheck > Work

    I've been hoping the Sunday Mercury News-Times-whatever front page article from Sunday would appear on its website, but the website is such a disaster I still cannot find it.  So here are a couple of tidbits from Thomas Peele's piece; retyped by yours truly

    San Mateo Harbor Commissioner Pietro Parravano got $25,757 in cash and benefits last year for attending 21 meetings that lasted an average of 77 minutes each, the (Mercury News') analysis shows.  That's $1,094 an hour.  Parravano, 64, a commercial fisherman from Half Moon Bay who also serves on several national fisheries commissions, said he's never questioned receiving full benefits for the part-time office he's held for nearly two decades.  The harbor commission oversees two marinas and a park and employed 27 workers in 2012.

    The article really laid into the another aspect

    Being a San Mateo County harbor commissioner can pay even beyond the grave.  When Commissioner Sally Campbell died in April 2012 during her 20th year in office, her cash pay stopped but the district continued to fund her medical insurance at a cost of more than $18,000.  That's because Campbell included her a grandson, whom she'd adopted as to make a legal dependent, on her policy.

    Finishing on a high note, the article concludes by saying

    In San Mateo County, Parravano said there is talk about rolling the harbor commission's functions into county government and doing away with the elected commission.

    Shouldn't that be about a 3 second conversation??

  • Rec Center Request

    By request I have created a category for the Rec Center since the topic will continue to be of interest.  I've been knocking on a few B'game doors the last few weekends and I can tell you it comes up way more often than a few of the Council challengers' pet topics.

    Here is an older post on the topic for some context.  And here is the Master Plan for a po$$ible new center from the City's web site.  By the way, I believe there are openings on the Park & Rec Commission if you are interested in getting more involved.  The current commissioners are here.

  • Halloween Approaches

    Lots of people have a soft spot for Halloween from their childhood days trick-or-treating.  And I'm one of them.  I'm thrilled that B'game's establishments Straits, Barrelhouse, Barracuda Sushi, Coconut Bay and Vinyl Room will be celebrating again this year.  Not just once, but twice!  We will have a Costume Pub Crawl on Sunday the 27th and the regular event on Thursday, Oct. 31st.

    We've had some wild, good times like two years ago described here.  Does anyone know if Amanda F. is still around and tending bar?

    Halloween 2013 events

    By the way, the Goodwill store on California Ave. has gone all out to stock a lot of Halloween costume items.  No need to drive to San Mateo or San Carlos or the big pop-up store on University in Palo Alto.

  • High Cost Rail – Part 94 A “Creative argument” from the Guv

    Refocusing away from the increasingly entertaining City Council race and back to high-cost rail for a moment, the SacBee's Dan Walters has another good round-up of the Governor's reaction to the adverse ruling we wrote about back in August.  Walters notes

    Sacramento Judge Michael Kenny agreed with San Joaquin
    Valley opponents of the project that a series of financial and procedural
    requirements to commit funds from the bond issue had not been met, thus
    imperiling plans to start construction on an initial segment in that region.

    The winning lawyers want Kenny to block any further work on
    the initial line and “go back to square one” to comply with the bond
    requirements, but such a delay could violate a looming federal government
    deadline for using its funds.


    In response, state lawyers creatively argue that
    construction can begin with $3.24 billion in federal grants without using state
    money, under a waiver granted by federal authorities eager to score a
    high-speed success.

    Please do click through and read the full article about Lockyer's reluctance to release funds and the threat to CEQA from a couple of federal bureaucrats who have "approved" a project that is entirely within one state.  We know that "blending" with Caltrain violates Prop 1A, but the Guv doesn't seem to care. This fight ain't over.

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