Month: January 2014

  • H2 NO

    Our hopes from December have been dashed–probably the wrong word since dashing takes water to accomplish.  Here is the USGS Hetch Hetchy reservoir level site that shows

    Image1

    This cannot be good.

  • E rat ification

    Leave it to John Horgan to find a squib on a topic of interest in my neighborhood–and probably yours too.  Roof rats are a common nuisance in B'game.  The hawk I mentioned a few weeks back has not visited again to my knowledge and I miss him.  Here's John's notice of someone who can help

    For more than two decades, diminutive Tina O'Keefe has been a godsend for local property owners afflicted with the troublesome presence of vermin. She is Pacifica's own Rat Lady.

    As she puts it, she is more than comfortable exterminating the troublesome rodents (including mice). She's been doing it for so long that it has become old hat.

    "I've even dealt with a few two-legged rats in my time," she notes wryly, mentioning no names in particular. A permanent (deadly) solution is not involved in such human cases, however.

    But the four-legged version is different; it's firmly in her focused cross-hairs. Tiny Tina and her helpful sons, along with their array of traps and other methods, have eradicated an estimated 14,000 of the annoying rodents through her 27 years, and counting, on the job as, officially, Dirty Rats Rodent Removal.

    As luck would have it, she also doubles as a real estate agent on the Coastside. As she puts it, "Any house I sell is rat-free." One would hope.

    I may give them a call, but if anyone else has any e rat ification tips, I'm all ears.  Pat Giorni's peanut butter suggestion hasn't yielded any results yet.

  • High Cost Rail – Part 99 Backscratch du Jour

    High cost rail eagle eyes located here have discovered that

    Gov. Jerry Brown asked the California Supreme Court to block delays to the state’s high-speed rail project just three days after accepting the maximum campaign contribution from the state’s high-speed rail contractor.

    On January 21, Tutor Perini, which has more than a $1 billion in outstanding contracts with the California High-Speed Rail Authority, donated $27,200 to the governor’s reelection committee, Brown for Governor 2014.

    Just three days later on January 24, Gov. Brown asked the California Supreme Court to intervene in two lower court rulings that halted the state’s high-speed rail construction. The Sacramento Bee featured the headline, “Jerry Brown asks California Supreme Court to intervene on high-speed rail.”

    In November, a Sacramento Superior Court judge delivered “a major legal blow to the California bullet train” that effectively halted California’s $68 billion high-speed rail project. In his ruling, Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny found that the project had violated voter-approved requirements on the construction process and therefore could not tap $9 billion in bonds. Construction cost estimates for the project have more than doubled, since voters approved the project in 2008.

    Brown’s attorneys argued to the state Supreme Court that “the future of the rail system may effectively be determined by two Superior Court rulings untethered from the law approved by the Legislature and the voters to build it.”

    Last year, the California High-Speed Rail Authority awarded a billion dollar design-build contract to a joint venture headed by Tutor Perini Corporation. The contract is valued at approximately $985 million, plus an additional $53 million in provisional sums. Tutor Perini’s portion of the contract value is approximately $500 million, according to the company’s website.

    Brown has also proposed using $250 million in new greenhouse gas fees—also known as cap-and-trade fees—to fund the project.

    The maximum campaign contribution to statewide candidates, according to the Fair Political Practices Commission, is $27,200.

    Now, of course, it's a legal and I support legal actions……so there's nothing to see here, move along, Mister.

  • Broadway Interchange – Part 1 Demolition starts

    A bloggers comment that he had seen a sketch of the new Broadway interchange and "it will have the width and charm of 28L at SFO" got me thinking about getting some photos for the Voice.  I've never been a fan of this interchange as it sits now.  I used it daily in the early '80s and I drive it regularly now and STILL have to be thoughtful about how I get where I am going through all the turns.  It must be nearly impossible for visitors of which there are many coming from hotel row to B'way and the rest of town.

    I also recall when I did a ride-along with BPD how much time it added to the police response on the bayfront.  Let's just hope the new interchange doesn't make us pine for aspects of the old one.  Here's the eastbound section and the tanks being removed from the old 76 station.

    Interchange3

    76 station tanks

  • $aving Our Pennie$ 2014

    The Daily Journal piece on the audit results have generated some council commentary on building up our reserves instead of taking on new projects right away. 

    The city’s annual audit revealed the city’s net position increased $13.1 million, or 7.4 percent, during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013. The city’s current total budget is $64.6 million. The largest positive budget variance was reported for the transient occupancy tax, or hotel tax, which totaled $18.2 million, up $2 million from the previous year. Property and sales tax revenues were up for a combined $1.4 million — as the economy continued its measured recovery from the 2009 downturn, according to a staff report.

    The council sentiment is quoted as "Also in agreement with Deal and Nagel was Councilman Ricardo Ortiz who would like the extra money to be saved for now." and I can't imagine council members Brownrigg or Keighran disagreeing with that.  Maybe just a little to commission a local artist to do a new painting of Anson B'game for city chambers?  I'll bet a couple of hundred would do the job.  In the meantime, keep shopping B'game.

  • Slow Speed Rail – 150th Birthday

    The SM Mercury News ran a couple of photos of the 150 anniversary celebration of commuter rail service on the peninsula line that the print edition claims are here, but I can't find them there so I have one of our own instead.  The special train stopped in B'game long enough for the Native Sons of the Golden West to present a historic plaque to members of the B'game Historical Society.  The plaque will be mounted on our historic train station.  It's a little small in the photo but it reads in part

    Burlingame Depot, Opened 1894

    This Building Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978

    In addition to the Wikipedia link above you can read about the Native Sons here.  We thank them for the plaque and the recognition of our depot as a key development in our little burg.  It's too bad our B'way station can't get some recognition as well–or at least more frequent service especially since ridership is way up.

    Native Sons_Caltrain2

     

  • Postal Protection: Berkeley-style

    I must say it is not often that I find a great example of how to run a local government in Berkeley, but today is one of those days.  The example bears directly on our own Post Office's future as we have followed here.  The SF Comicle is reporting on a US Congressional vote

    Berkeley's hopes of keeping its century-old post office off the auction block have gotten a boost in Congress, where a bipartisan House bill urges the Postal Service to refrain from selling historic buildings, including Berkeley's, while the U.S. inspector general investigates whether the agency is violating preservation laws.

    Now one might think why does Congress have to have a vote to tell a federal agency to follow the law, but that appears to be the state of things these days.  The more interesting part is the Berkeley council's perspective

    Protesters have camped out at the site, and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, the entire City Council and Rep.Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, have implored the Postal Service to spare the Berkeley landmark.

    Now the House is weighing in with language that calls on the Postal Service to "suspend the sale of any historic post office" while the Inspector General looks into the agency's compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act.

    Hope springs eternal that the sun is not setting on our own historical gem.

    Post Office sunset

  • High Cost Rail Part 98 – Budget Shell Game

    For the first high-cost rail posting of the year, I will tie together a couple of news items.  Gov. Moonbeam's new "surplus" budget includes a $300 million shell game with so-called Cap and Trade funds going to high-cost rail.  Today's SM County Times has an on-point letter that I would link to if the website were not so disorganized.  Here it is courtesy of your Voice typist

    Gov. Jerry Brown's scheme to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from true cap-and-trade greenhouse gas-reducing projects to his legacy high-speed boondoggle must be stopped.  Call your state reps today.  HSR is ruthless and is using money to evict helpless Central Valley families through eminent domain.  Independent Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny recently ruled that that Proposition 1A's promises to voters were all violated by the HSR authority, so no bonds could be issued.  Using cap-and-trade money on a boondoggle train that won't be built, instead of true greenhouse gas projects like electric/CNG vehicles and solar power, is done to kowtow to the powerful unions and is wrong.  Even Senate President Darrell Steinberg is against this farce.

    Mike Brown

    Burlingame

    Well-said, sir.  So let me tie those ideas to another news item that notes

    Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says unless Congress acts, the Highway Trust Fund will run out of money at the end of fiscal 2014 — "because people are driving less, driving more fuel-efficient cars, and the gas tax hasn't been raised in many years."

    That's LaHood's solution to the problem that, in his words, "America is one big pothole".  Raise taxes so the Feds can waste more money on high-cost rail with a shell game of their own.  What a dolt.  His other idea at the end of a "congestion tax"– he really means fee–is slightly better, but no one has taken up that cause yet.

  • Another Talented B’gamer

    The SM County Times has a great write-up about the SF Symphony's current "Beethoven and Bates Festival" highlighting a piece by B'gamer Mason Bates.  I don't know Mr. Bates, but I like what I read about his composition and performance with the symphony.  The article's author, Richard Scheinin, notes

    I'm just guessing that some sort of Isaac Hayes fanaticism lurks behind Bates's piece, which the orchestra commissioned and premiered in 2009. Bates (who is 36, lives in Burlingame and shuttles to the Midwest as a composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) has made a name as the man with two careers. Also a club DJ, he isn't shy about describing his influences as a composer. They run, he has said, from Berlioz to John Adams and Swedish texturalists, from Pink Floyd to Radiohead, and from jazz keyboardist John Medeski to "micro house" techno minimalism.

    That about covers the waterfront in terms of influences!  I don't envy him the B'game to Chicago commute tho!

    Update:  Jan. 17th      I had a great time at the SF Symphony last night.  I got there early enough to hear the pre-concert talk by Mason Bates that really helped me grasp the innovations with natural and man-made pre-recorded sounds that he incorporated into the piece Liquid Interface.  My front row seat gave me a spectacular view of MTT fiddling with his conductor's monitor for the pre-recorded part.  You could really tell this was a guy accustomed to dealing only with live performers.  The Playbill indicates that when they have the third and last Bates piece recorded a CD will be released.  Here's a cameraphone photo of Mason taking a bow at the end.

    Mason Bates bow

  • Graffiti: Ready for myB’game

    I hate graffiti as does almost everyone else.  B'game struggles with it like everyone else.  There's a description of a cool app and the supporting anti-graffiti service that San Mateo has in the SF Examiner here.  As the piece notes

    The city of San Mateo recently unveiled a mobile app designed to make it easier for community members to report graffiti vandalism and for city contractors to respond to such cases. The app, called mySanMateo, is available for Apple and Android devices, and it allows users to attach photos and precise GPS coordinates to their service requests.

    The contract details as provided by Assistant City Manager Matt

    Bronson said the app developer, App-Order, is a sister company of the city’s new graffiti abatement contractor, Graffiti Protective Coatings. Therefore, the $8,000 monthly bill covers not only the app and its associated Web reporting and tracking technology, but also the physical work of removing graffiti.

    Being a much smaller city, we should be quite a bit less than the $96K per year, we may already use the company and just need to app access.  I'm ready for myB'game!

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