Here's another beautiful scene from Dear Old B'game. One section of El Camino runs exactly east-west and thus gets a lot of straight on morning sun ("southbound" which is really eastbound) and evening sunset ("northbound"). Here's a photo from the middle of ECR at about 7:30pm. It makes me think we will pine for the decimated eucalyptus when the Little Big Dig starts taking out 91% of them. As we wait for the axe man to cometh, think about getting a bigger, better visor for your car.
The SF Comicle has brought us a cautionary tale about the Caltrans project to upgrade Guerneville's main drag which is also a state highway. The four block long project has echoes to the B'game Ave. streetscape project done years ago, but I'm hearing warnings about our forthcoming El Camino Real project that I've taken to calling the "Little Big Dig". Here are a couple of snippets from the Comicle piece starting with the blunt advice from a local business owner that concludes the article:
“If I had advice for the next community — get a lawyer,” gallery owner Douglas DeVivo said.
Caltrans spokesperson Jeffrey Weiss said the project to upgrade Guerneville’s sidewalks to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act was originally slated to begin last summer. Caltrans delayed the project start “to minimize construction impacts on merchants during the town’s busy summer season,” he said in an email. The agency said that “additional delays occurred when the contractor encountered unrecorded, abandoned underground utilities, railroad ties, and large redwood tree stumps and root systems,” and that “you never know what you’ll find in an old community when you start digging.”
Truer words were never spoken. You never know what you'll find once the backhoe arrives. And they weren't cutting down hundreds of huge trees and undergrounding three or four types of overhead wires.
Like many small towns across California, a state highway also serves as Main Street in Guerneville. That has left Guerneville residents few avenues to weigh in on how revamping their town — from business disruptions to aesthetics — might unfold.
The project included widening sidewalks, installing 23 curb ramps to accommodate wheelchairs, adding traffic signals and sidewalk bulb-outs at corners crossings as well as two pedestrian beacons. County Supervisor Hopkins said that some delays have been understandable, given the lack of documentation for the pipes or old-growth redwood stumps under the sidewalk’s surface.
Weiss also said that during the sidewalk excavation, crews “noticed that the roadway drainage was in poor condition and extensive repairs were made.”
We certainly have that to look forward to. It's really the main issue that needs to be resolved, but the rest of the add-ons to meet Caltrans code and bury the wires will make our roughly three-mile project seem longer. I worry about the fire, police and ambulance response time. And the illegal delivery truck blockages need to stop. While ECR isn't our central commercial district, our Broadway and Avenew businesses will probably feel some of the same effect as Guerneville did. Let's hope it's mild and nobody has to lawyer-up.
Here is the bookend treehugger post to the early Spring post back in March. This dogwood's blossoms have held on for weeks even with all the wind. Just a stunning bit of arbor beauty. The long evenings of sunlight make it even better as you can see here:
The massive project to "fix" El Camino Real known around town as The Big Dig after the Boston tunnel project has slipped to a Fall 2025 start with the PG&E part slipping into 2026. The Axeman still cometh for 90% of the eucalyptus, but it looks like they may live to see another winter. Finalizing the easements from ECR property owners is causing the slippage. Per the DJ piece
There are two major elements to the project. One, a Caltrans effort to repair the road, sidewalk and street lights that will span from Millbrae to San Mateo, may begin work by fall of this year, however, that construction may start in one of the other cities first.
The second aspect of the project is a Burlingame-specific push for PG&E to underground utilities. The construction start date for that work has been delayed to the second quarter of 2026, Okada said.
Delays to Caltrans’ work on the road revamp are being caused in part by the need for signed reconciliations that affirm property owners are aware if their driveways, gardens and retaining walls in the public right-of-way will need to be removed to make way for sidewalk work.
The city has committed to paying for the reconstruction of those facilities if property owners allow them to be temporarily removed, Burlingame Councilmember Donna Colson said, but has still run into trouble obtaining all of the necessary documentation of the easements.
Slipping timelines equate to slipping funding and budgets even though inflation is moderating. Thus, this uncertainty could be concerning as the undergrounding of the power lines is where the hidden problems like 1920's buried fuel tanks and other obstructions surface.
On the PG&E side, the paperwork for procuring a contractor has been delayed, Okada said.
The count of trees to be removed is also a moving target. It's still a lot of big, beautiful trees, but how many appears to have changed
The tree removal aspect of the project has long been controversial in Burlingame, which is well-known for its forestry. Plans to take down 382 trees, plant 429 and retain more than 193 trees have slowly come together with input from groups like the Burlingame Historical Society.
While we wait for the Big Dig to start perhaps Caltrans could throw us a bone and fix the potholes? The City should formally request a Spring patch along the whole stretch. I would also like to see the surviving trees be marked as such well before the project begins. That's just good transparency. A constant finding in talking to B'gamers is very few have any idea that hundreds of trees are on the chopping block.
I stopped by the Easton library this week. Not for a book, but to check in on Tom Jr. Regular readers will recall the 2007 controversy over cutting down Tom the Tree (now Tom Sr.) Refresh your memory here although you may be depressed by the "eucs roam free" bit as it is about to end for all but 9% of them.
As you can see below, Tom Jr. is doing pretty well. He is on the left next to one of his father's younger buddies. TJ has grown to about 18" in diameter at waist height and looks quite healthy. Thank goodness.
You may have also gotten this notice in the mail this week from the City if you are on a theme street or close to certain addresses. It's written is a vague manner that is a bit unsettling. Perhaps that is a good strategy to get people to look. "Removal of private protected tree(s)? Excessive pruning? Here is the link shown on the card. Lots of tree news, fellow huggers.
Yesterday was a brilliant Spring B'game day. Coupled with the lovely time change things are looking up in the yard. Here is an early Spring treehugger post showing the difference between two of my Japanese maples–planted right next to each other, but leading two entirely different lives at the moment. The green one on the left has been fully leafed out for more than a week. The one on the right will eventually be red. It turns out that for some reason the green ones lead the way, and the red ones take much longer.
I'll have another Spring treehugger post when I find something amazing around town. In the meantime, the birds are happy too. Yesterday we had house finches, Bewick's wrens, Anna's hummingbirds, Mourning doves, and Chestnut-backed chickadees making a racket. Happy Spring.
We covered the shortcomings of the historic City Hall here last September when the search for alternatives started. As we noted then, a central downtown location is an intangible that is hard to value and harder to replace. Right on cue, staff is recommending a move around the corner to 1440 Chapin Ave–across the street from Mollie Stone's. The move would involve two phases–a leased period followed by a purchase of the building and inheriting some of the existing tenants. Per the Staff Report
Pursuant to the Lease and Purchase Agreements, the City is required to purchase the building by June 30, 2027, for a price of $34,500,000. After the building is purchased, the City plans to retain existing tenants in office suites not occupied by the City, which will serve as a source of revenue for the City and offset some or all of the costs associated with purchasing 1440 Chapin. Revenue is estimated to be $1,656,000 per year from rental income.
The city as a landlord could also extend to "the opportunity to collaborate with other public agencies, if they would like to lease space in the new City Hall." The plan is up for discussion at tomorrow night's city council meeting and as these things go, I would think the deal is basically done. Enough ground has been laid and there are enough short-tenured councilmembers that staff's say-so will suffice. We don't have a Rosalie O'Mahony to issue a caution that would prevail.
The real question is what of the current City Hall property? The DJ piece raised the question, but the answer is "we'll figure that out later"
Nearly 10 years ago, Burlingame had weighed the possibility of developing housing at the current City Hall site, though (Mayor Peter) Stevenson said conversation around the fate of the old building would be held at a future date.
Engaged locals are already worried about the open space in front of city hall. The holiday tree lighting is a classic B'game community event. The pressure to flip it to a developer who would "stack and pack" it with a mix of "affordable housing" will be high. Is there enough backbone to resist it and make the best use of the aging facility possible? Are there potential tenants who don't need Class A space? What about those "other public agencies"? There is also a decent amount of parking on the site so if a Return to Office move is afoot for city staff, those spaces are a short, healthy walk to 1440 Chapin. We shall see. An eagle-eyed reader sent me the Instagram post about tomorrow's meeting. I didn't know the city was posting there.
A nice heavy rainy day in B'game is the perfect time to reflect on Not Forgetting about our wildfire risk. Almost three years ago we covered the Emerald Hills fire here. Then came Pacific Palisades and Altadena which has pushed FAIR into the red and will cost all of us a pretty penny in insurance increases. It's one thing to write State Farm or Farmer's a bigger check, it's quite another to lose your home.
The risks are multi-dimensional. How good is our fuel management, particularly up the hill with our neighbors? The state is updating the high-risk maps as part of Newsom's latest revelation that the 5 foot "Zone 0" area next to dwellings needs to be clear of fuel. One has to wonder where he's been for the last five or ten years? You can get a sense of the Hillsborough high-risk area here. Swapping email with the CCFD Chief, I learned
In Hillsborough, the town conducts fuel management on town owned parcels and we have an extensive Wildland Urban Interface inspection program. Inspections are conducted annually and education and enforcement is applied according to the situation.
I know from friends that there have been non-renewals and big increases in insurance rates up there. The insurers have reportedly also used drones to find private parcels that are at high-risk from lack of fuel maintenance and some of that information may even be informing their rates for the neighbors. "It takes a village".
Our water supply is another aspect of preparation. Swapping email with Public Works, I learned
We tap SFPUC system near Magnolia/Trousdale and use its static head to a point near BIS on Trousdale, and from there it is pumped to the Mills Reservoir. From there, it gets gravity fed to Sky View Reservoir, which then serves the hillside area below. On the south side of the City, we pump the water to the Hillside Reservoir located next to the Fire Station 35, which then serves the water to the zone that is above and outside of the SFPUC aqueduct zone. We have four other SFPUC turnouts that we tap into to serve the remaining parts of the City primarily by gravity. Hillsborough has a separate system outside of Burlingame, much of their water supply is pumped to their hills and then served to the residents unlike Burlingame.
A bit more research is in order for the layperson to follow the plumbing described above. It's also a fair question to wonder how up to date the various parts are right now. I asked about how we go about flushing the hydrants? It was a pretty common thing to see when I was a kid, but I can't recall seeing it in B'game. I've must have missed it since Public Works states
Burlingame has proactively invested in a robust capital improvement program to modernize its aging water infrastructure over the past few decades. This includes replacing several miles of water mains and upgrading older fire hydrants with newer models and adding new fire hydrants if needed. These efforts have not only enhanced the City’s water capacity but have also significantly improved fire protection. The hydrant flushing program is active and we rotate the program throughout the City based on water quality parameters. The public may see more at some times than others as needed based on our water quality requirements.
The bottom line is B'game is not one of the eight cities in San Mateo County at the highest risk as shown here. We have a lot of infrastructure. We have maintenance plans. My discussions with a concerned H'borough resident lead me to continue to believe our biggest risk stems from big private parcels up there that may not be on top of fuel management. With all of the eucs up there, the effort described in the Merc about the work at East Bay Parks is something to aspire to here.
East Bay Parks has nearly quadrupled its fuel reduction staff in the past five years to take on the Herculean task of bringing the forest back into order, including the addition of Fuels Reduction Coordinator Givonne Law.
“Eucalyptus is notorious for being a very difficult-to-handle tree. Not only is it very heavy, but there’s generally huge accumulations,” Law said. “A lot of machinery operators out there will see a project like this and will just walk away.”
Law’s task was to thin the forest from more than 750 eucalyptus stems per acre to 150 stems per acre. Her aim, she said, was not to eliminate eucalyptus — despite their oily, flammable properties — but to reconstitute the balance of the forest to allow less dangerous trees such as bay and oak to reestablish themselves.
That works out to about one stem per 300 square feet–a 17 x 17 foot area. A drive through H'borough will easily show areas with more density than that.
At this moment I'm sitting in West Maui, in the Kahana-Napili area, looking out at Molokai and Lanai while watching some video of the Pacific Palisades devastation. A one-minute driving clip on X is eerily reminiscent of a clip from a local friend who was authorized to drive through Lahaina after the August 8, 2023 fire that killed 101 people. A year and a half later one still cannot go into the center of Lahaina–Front Street. Another friend got close this week and saw that some rubble is just now being bulldozed and hauled away. In January of 2025. Hazmat. Insurance. Cell service. Coastal restrictions. Equipment. Cost. All will be in play in LA, too.
Oakland 1991 comes to mind. Paradise, CA. Chico. Several more in remote parts of the Sierra. It's on-going and fully predictable. Joe Rogan relayed an LA firefighter predicting the exact magnitude of the Palisades fire his podcast last July! I'm really hoping this old Voice post doesn't end up being another predictable concern come true.
And of course there is the air pollution of each blaze. The Merc notes:
Massive plumes from multiple fires in Los Angeles County are choking the region’s skies and sending air quality to dangerous levels. Thursday morning Los Angeles had an AQI of 182, considered “unhealthy,” and currently among the worst in the world. The smoke was so dense that it was captured in satellite photos.
Current forecasts through Saturday show most of the smoke from the wildfires wafting out into the ocean and making a weak return back to the coast as far north as Monterey.
Tell me again how ripping out a high-efficiency furnace/water heater and a gas stovetop that gets a half hour of use most weeks is really important, but actually planning and executing wildfire prevention just never seems to rise to the top of Big Politicians priority list?
The Japanese maples in town have been spectacular, but we have to mix up our tree hugger species a bit each year. The early rains have the seven creeks of B'game flowing nicely and the cloudy, rainy days this past week made our gingkoes stand out even more. Here's a couple on Bayswater and the daylight portion of the creek at Heritage Park that runs through downtown. We're lucky the rains cleared for Thanksgiving. Hope you all have a good one.
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