The easiest tax to support is one you will never pay. And no, I’m not talking about the billionaire tax. Raising the Transient Occupancy Tax, the “ToT”, is on our ballot in five weeks and as the DJ editorial says, it’s a “no brainer”. The rationale may not always be solid as in “hey, revenue is down so we must raise the tax rate”, but that’s the story and supporters are sticking with it. From the DJ
Before COVID, the city collected approximately $30 million in revenue from the 12% hotel tax. In its last budget, the city showed it collected approximately $23 million. Before COVID, the hotel tax provided about 35% of the city’s revenue and the most recent budget showed it provided about 23% of the city’s $93 million annual general fund budget.
There might be other new revenues in the denominator of the 23% ratio like Facebook and the other new businesses along Old Bayshore. Maybe auto sales are up–the prices certainly are. The claim is the average room rate on the B’game bayfront is $200, but a bit of Gemini searching yields more like $300-350 and big conventions in the city take it up from there. 15% of $300 is $45/night–a better way to think about it than the editorial saying it’s an incremental $6 per night. It’s easier to say neighboring cities’ ToTs are higher so just level us up. Prop. D stands for just Do it. Nobody voting for it will ever pay it.
Should we be angry that our dear leaders appear to think we are stupid? I suppose so. How else to process these two things simultaneously? The Merc reports
A broad new water conservation law will soon take effect in phases, banning the watering of “ornamental turf” at corporate, industrial, government and homeowners’ association properties with drinking water across California as a way to preserve supplies.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the new state law in 2023 as California was emerging from a harsh three-year drought. Starting on Jan. 1, it will be illegal for local and regional government agencies across the state — including schools, cities, counties, courthouses, fire stations and libraries — to irrigate decorative grass with potable water whether or not California is in a drought. On Jan. 1, 2028, the ban will expand to commercial businesses like office parks, car dealerships, supermarkets, strip malls and corporate campuses, along with colleges and universities. And on Jan. 1, 2029, it will apply to homeowners’ associations.
But let this bit of news from the Comicle sink into your cognitive dissonance–rattled brain
For the past 21 years, he and many other Brisbane residents have opposed efforts to transform the roughly 680-acre former industrial site straddling the San Francisco border into a mixed-use development with thousands of homes. In July, after Brisbane repeatedly missed deadlines to approve a plan for up to 2,200 homes on the Baylands site that would cover 81% of its state-mandated housing allocation, California ruled the city out of compliance with state housing laws.
The plan evolved over the years as environmental studies and cleanup proposals developed, and demand for housing grew. By 2010, the proposal called for about 4,400 homes, mostly concentrated in the northwest corner of the Baylands site, away from the old landfill. The developer had also been working on a project adjacent to the site that includes the former Schlage Lock factory, where San Francisco leaders had already approved 1,674 housing units.
I won’t reach for my calculator, but one doesn’t need it to know that is a lot of housing–and that’s just Brisbane and the southern reaches of EssEff. So much for being green as in green grass. What exactly happens to all these square miles of grass that get parched and die because there is hardly any non-potable water around? And what about the trees that are interspersed on this “ornamental turf”. Do all the property owners need to run separate irrigation lines to them to keep them alive? They think we are all stupid. And perhaps a majority of us are.
P.S. update: I walk by this lovely patch of grass up at CSM every week. It’s right across from the big new dorm being built. Very ironic. Water consuming dorm next to soon-to-be-dead “ornamental grass”. As the kids say “touch grass” except for those living on the CSM campus…..
Amid the steady drumbeat of housing affordability and lack of same, one entity doesn’t seem to have any problem buying up real estate. The San Mateo County government is buying left and right regardless of whether the cities they are buying in like it or not. Today’s DJ headline is “Contentious land buy OK’d; County buys Foster City property for Human Services Agency“. Another $29 million to upgrade the second largest department’s digs. The La Quinta motel purchase in Millbrae sparked all sorts of protests and a recall election (which was successful). The “sobering center” planned for B’game’s Bayfront may be controversial with some nearby business owners and hoteliers, but it hasn’t sparked the same ire as the San Mateo proposal on El Camino did. Just another run-of-the-mill $13 million purchase. There is the “affordable housing” project in Daly City and Caltrain had no problems getting primo space in the new Millbrae complex but constantly reminds us it may literally go under soon.
One wonders when the belt-tightening will begin? Perhaps the November election will send a message about it.
B’game has been in the news about Bay Area layoffs lately. Both the Comicle and the Merc have reported on our shrinking Bayfront employee count:
Meta’s sweeping layoffs will affect nearly 700 Bay Area workers, adding to years of cuts in the face of massive artificial intelligence investment and overhiring during the pandemic. The social media giant said in state filings that layoffs would affect 338 workers in Burlingame, 252 in San Francisco and 81 in Fremont — for a total of 671. In April, Meta also cut nearly 200 jobs in Burlingame and Sunnyvale.
Perhaps Meta could redeploy some of that excess virtual reality talent to redesign a large auditorium or conference room to be a movie theater on campus. Or wait. A nice drive-in, drive-up theater on top of the massive parking structure would be nice. I would even wear my Metaview glasses instead of hooking a big metal speaker to my car window.
We have not had a Guest Author on the Voice in quite awhile, but when San Matean David Long asked me why I had not weighed in on the “sobering center” controversy I asked him to pen his perspective for us. I wasn’t really paying attention to the issue when it was in San Mateo and he has, as you will read here. The DJ had a piece two days ago that noted
San Mateo County will purchase a $13 million Burlingame property to hopefully open up a sobering station as soon as possible, house the Pride Center and provide an option for a treatment facility, with supervisor approval Tuesday. The property of more than 2 acres at 818-828 Mahler Road was the former site of First Chance, a 14-bed sobering center operated by since-closed nonprofit StarVista.
Since First Chance closed, individuals who get arrested for driving under the influence are brought to county jail, rather than a station that promotes wellness and provides offenders with resources and opportunities to rehabilitate. It costs double the amount to house a DUI offender in a county correctional facility than a sobering center.
Here is David’s perspective on the switch from central San Mateo to Mahler Rd.:
San Mateo County’s proposed sobering and treatment center at 101 N. El Camino Real has felt like an experiment in how many bad land-use decisions could be shoe-horned into an already congested corridor.
Dense residential neighborhood? Check.
Multiple schools and daycares nearby? Check.
Dense senior housing within walking distance? Check.
Breakneck traffic at a pockmarked El Camino intersection seemingly designed by bumper-car enthusiasts? Absolutely.
And yet somehow, this was presented as the “best” location for a large detox and treatment facility projected to generate up to 17,000 annual client trips with 24/7 intake activity? Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.
On Tuesday, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to purchase the former sobering center property on Mahler Road in Burlingame for $13 million. Only a single speaker opposed the purchase. Even the Burlingame City Council – never mistaken for a drum circle – gave Mahler Road unusually ‘high’ marks at its 4/20 meeting. Why? Because Mahler Road makes sense.
At two acres, it’s a large parcel in a light industrial and emerging biotech corridor with sparse nearby housing. It sits just one mile from Highway 101 and three miles from Mills-Peninsula Medical Center. Most importantly, it has a long, proven history as a sobering center serving San Mateo County. The Mahler sobering component is expected to open within six months. By comparison, the 101 ECR proposal likely faced a three-to-five-year runway filled with entitlement battles, lawsuits, redesigns, and enough public hostility to power a small city.
Burlingame’s Supervisor Jackie Speier deserves enormous credit for recognizing the broader potential of the Mahler site. In addition to treatment services, discussions have included a future home for the San Mateo County Pride Center – which has been without a permanent location since 2024 – as well as possible housing for essential service workers increasingly priced out of the communities they serve.
Which makes San Mateo’s Supervisor Noelia Corzo’s continued attachment to the 101 ECR location all the more puzzling. This debacle echoes her divisive performance during COVID while serving as SMFCSD’s school board President, where her stubbornness and delays reopening San Mateo public schools were epic. Her tone-deaf obstinacy has triggered a June primary write-in candidate (Taso Zografos) and a recall effort (you heard it here first).
At some point, leadership means recognizing when a better option has emerged. Corzo’s four Supervisor colleagues did exactly that. They listened to residents, looked at operational realities, and pivoted toward a faster, cheaper, and far less divisive solution.
These are important services that our families, friends and neighbors need ASAP. The Mahler location delivers services quickly and in a location that is well suited for this use. Only time will tell, but San Mateo County appears to be getting this right.
David Long is a San Mateo Park resident who continues to view the failed 1909 Burlingame annexation effort of his neighborhood as one of local history’s great missed opportunities.
—————
With all the fuss about commercial properties not turning over and thus never being revalued per Prop. 13, my hope is that even if the County did get a deal at $13 million, I hope they are paying full property taxes on the purchase. We shall see how the Broadway overpass handles another 17,000 trips per year. And yes, San Mateo Park would have made a great addition to South B’game. Thanks, David. I happened by 818 Mahler and snapped this photo. The building really looks like it needs some love.
The Chronicle’s local sightseeing tour guide/reporter, Peter Hartlaub, who grew up in B’game journeyed back to our little burg for a piece on Coyote Point. He has some fun little quips that we can enjoy here or you can click through for the whole article. It sounds like he grew up in Lyon-Hoag.
Coyote Point’s geography is similar to other Bay Area parks, a 670-acre shoreline promontory with a tree-covered hill, laid out a lot like Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro and the East Bay’s Albany Bulb. But the overall vibes are one of a kind, with the airplanes, massive picnic areas, tide pools, a colorful playground, a hidden zoo, oh, and bursts of audible gunfire.
It’s also a lesson for me: How the Bay Area things we grew up with that once felt routine, seem wild and mystical when you return with perspective. I was raised in Burlingame six blocks from Coyote Point, and thought this strange and versatile park was the norm. Biking through the entire thing for the first time in decades, I’m struck by how close I once lived to an open space unicorn.
From (Caltrain) I bike slowly east through a town I barely recognize, retracing most of my old 1980s Chronicle paper route and passing my childhood home — bought by my parents for $35,000 in 1970 — now mostly unrecognizable after a recent modern makeover.
After recapping the landfill in the 1880s that connected the island to the shoreline and the Pacific City fiasco, he mentions another long-gone landmark that we all miss as he bikes up the hill
I power up the first hill and sadly find no sign of the Castaway, a tiki-themed fancy restaurant with airport views, where we gathered for graduations and Mother’s Day. (It was bulldozed in 2007.)
As I’m leaving, I marvel at how much better this went than I feared. So much of my middle-class childhood on the Peninsula — every movie theater, drive-in, record store and favorite sandwich spot — has been swallowed by Silicon Valley. But this park is both preserved and objectively better than when I visited as a kid.
I bike back through my old neighborhood slowly, wishing I had a few more Chronicles to deliver. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Especially when it’s a half-century later and a special place still has some magic left.
Let’s see if we can keep as much of “the magic” as possible. It’s very tough to do, but as some city council woman said more than once, “You’ll miss it when it’s gone”.
I won’t bemoan the dearth of fine dining in B’game again–I just did that here. Instead let’s look on the bright side. The city posts a quarterly sales tax analysis on its website here. The Top 20 sales tax generators are called out each quarter, and three restaurants made the cut back in Q1.
Working alphabetically, Benihana, HL Peninsula Pearl and New England Lobster are our busiest restaurants. All three being out on the Bayfront means tourists are propping up our tax revenues although I love the lobstah place. Restaurants and hotels are the third largest contributors at around $600K that quarter with the Hyatt and the Marriott making the Top 20.
This list has been pretty stable over the years, but if I can get the latest figures from Finance, I’ll add them as a comment. In the meantime, Dine Burlingame and let’s see if we can get a couple more restaurants on the list. Rumors around one of the largest downtown spaces changing hands to a high-profile Peninsula chain that is always packed might make it happen.
There is a steady drumbeat of bad news for the EV market as manufacturer after manufacturer cuts forecasts, lays off workers, idles battery and car plants while discounting the inventory to offset the loss of the $7,500 taxpayer subsidy. Couple that with half of the country dissing the owner of the most popular EV company and the on-going struggles with keeping chargers in working order and it seems like Waymo is the only real growth in the EV world. Here are some snippets from the news:
The growth rate for new EV sales in the U.S. dropped from 40% in 2023 to about 10% in 2024. In the second quarter of 2025, U.S. sales declined 6.3% year-on-year.
GM plans to lay off more than 3,300 hourly workers at plants across Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee starting in January. Of those, more than 1,700 are being laid off indefinitely, while more than 1,500 are expected to be called back in mid-2026. Ford is moving workers from the plant that makes the electric F-150 Lightning to a nearby factory that makes the more popular—and profitable—gasoline-burning version. Nissan has decided not to offer its Ariya EV as a 2026 model and Honda has halted orders of the electric Acura ZDX, which is manufactured by GM.
Porshe is facing financial decline due to a strategic shift away from rapid EV adoption, resulting in a recent quarterly loss, a profit plunge, and significant one-time costs of about $3.1 billion. This “EV reset” involves pausing new electric models, delaying some launches, and re-evaluating the strategy, driven by cooling EV demand, especially in the luxury segment.
Here in B’game my main interest is in making sure the goofy EV parking rules we see in places like Top Golf don’t proliferate. The whole row of spaces near the front entrance (probably 40 or so) are EV-only as is the front row of the lower parking lot. Why? Who knows? It’s not because of chargers because there ain’t no chargers for many of the spaces. Check it out. Parking discrimination!
I feel for the people on the west side of EssEff. The (over)development pressure from various state laws and codes has them on edge. Close the Great Highway? Sure. Let the voters on the east side disrupt your daily life. Miami styled high rises blocking the sunset in the Sunset? Too bad. Now with Scott Weiner’s SB79 signed into law, we are all at risk of being Miami-ized. SB 79 does this:
Overriding local limits: SB 79 supersedes certain local zoning restrictions to permit greater density and building height for housing projects located within a half-mile of qualifying transit stops.
Target areas: It primarily applies to urban counties with significant transit infrastructure, such as those in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.
Affordability: The law includes requirements for a portion of the new units to be set aside for lower-income households.
Local flexibility: Local governments can adopt alternative development plans that must be approved by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).
The bill looked like it was headed to defeat, but the Sacramento sausage-making took center stage as
The chair, Sen. Aisha Wahab of Fremont, opposed the bill on the grounds that it tilted too heavily toward developers without requiring enough affordable housing. In Sacramento, a chair’s word usually decides a bill’s fate. But Weiner went above Wahab’s head, calling Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire, the Dem. Majority leader, asking him to give the other Senators on the committee to vote against the chair, a maneuver known in the Capitol as “rolling the chair” and is often seen as a breach of decorum and defiance of leadership.
There was more sausage-making to come including
Amendments made in the 11th hour got the bill through the State Building and Construction Trades Council, when the bill was amended to require union labor on any building taller than 85 feet, and tenant groups got some protections for low-income neighorhoods. In the end, Wahab and Durazo flipped to support the bill.” Lucky for Newsom, the bill’s reach was narrowed to counties with over 15 major passenger rail stations, leaving out Contra Costa, and Marin, where Newsom recently purchased a mansion in Kentfield for $9 million.
How nice. Marin gets the status quo while EssEff, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties get the intense development pressure. With B’game’s central location between the city and Silicon Valley and the lovely amenities, schools and weather, I’m feeling a bit like the bullseye on the developers’ dartboard. Will our council get creative? Will they muster support from other similarly situated Peninsula cities? Or even go farther afield like Huntington Beach? I’m not seeing that sort of backbone. Will the parking lot across ECR from Walgreen’s be the Miami beachhead in town?
With all of the overdevelopment near 101 and in the North End, emergency response and fire response has been a growing concern–for those that think pragmatically. Denser housing, especially where there has traditionally been no housing, brings more need. So, it was good news that a big Federal grant has allowed the station on Rollins that has been closed for 15 years to reopen with newly hired firefighters. The Daily Journal grabbed the photo op "Burlingame, Hillsborough and Millbrae councilmembers complete the engine push-in tradition alongside fire department personnel."
Central County Fire — which serves Burlingame, Hillsborough and Millbrae — originally shut down operations at the station as a cost-cutting measure. But the department was recently awarded a substantial $8 million grant from the federal government, allowing it to hire 12 additional firefighters and reopen Station 36. The $8.1 million Staffing For Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant was originally awarded to CCFD in November 2024 and is to be used over a three-year period. The department will be tasked with providing an additional half-million dollars in funding, per a staff report from the CCFD board.
Reopening the station will provide up to a four-minute improvement in response times to the Bayside area of CCFD’s jurisdiction, Fire Chief David Pucci said.
When you need serious help, four minutes is a looong time to wait. Test it. Set your phone timer to four minutes and sit totally still, silent and sort of meditate. Good stuff.
The Burlingame Voice is dedicated to informing and empowering the Burlingame community. Our blog is a public forum for the discussion of issues that relate to Burlingame, California. Opinions posted on the Burlingame Voice are those of the poster and commenter and not necessarily the opinion of the Editorial Board. Comments are subject to the Terms of Use.
