The Burlingame Voice – Page 43 – Dedicated to Empowering and Informing the Burlingame Community

August 17, 2022

B’game better than “Climate best by government test”

If you grew up with oppressive summer heat and humidity like I did, you really appreciate how nice the weather is in B'game. Yesterday was a perfect example. It was on the verge of being uncomfortably hot and a bit humid here. High temperature was 88. But down in Redwood City, with its motto "Climate best by government test", their temperature topped out at 100 degrees. Yuck.

And the Chronicle noted "Livermore recorded 102 degrees Tuesday afternoon, according the National Weather Service. Fairfield reached 105 degrees, and Vacaville hit 102 degrees." Double yuck. I haven't seen any reports of brownouts yesterday, but we aren't done yet. When the "Burlingame For All" people reappear, remember why people pay extra to live here and why it's worth it.

It is also time for the annual summer check-up on my ancient pear tree. The yield goes back and forth year-to-year like last year. The year before was a low yield too, but we had good harvests the two prior years. This year I count eight, but they are already big and beautiful, so now we try to outwit the squirrels by letting them ripen, but not too much.

Posted by:
Joe

August 17, 2022

3 comments on B’game better than “Climate best by government test”
August 14, 2022

80% Voter Suppression in Burlingame

The slimy little lawyer from Malibu who has no friggin' clue about anything in Burlingame has finally gotten his scummy little way. Yesterday was the deadline for filing for the B'game city council election and we will have 1/5 of the election we would have had, thanks to someone who has probably never even graced our lovely avenues, roads or courts. Our prior post covered the background of this travesty with our new five little districts here. Further back you can read here. As a B'game resident, you used to have five votes for the five seats on the city council. They were all your council members and had to answer your phone calls. No more. 40 percent of you (including me) get NO VOTE this year for city council even though three seats are up. Another 40 percent of you can vote, but there is only one candidate running in your tiny little postage stamp district, so if you dislike them and their policies you are stuck writing in Ronald McDonald–and your fries will be cold. Nice work scummy lawyer.

20 percent of the town has an election. This is real voter suppression to the tune of 80%. Not the BS you read about in the paper where showing an ID to vote is somehow an insurmountable challenge. It's right here in the vote YOU DON"T GET TO CAST.

Ricardo Ortiz and Michael Brownrigg, formerly known as "Mike", are now unopposed in their north end districts. The little lawyer from Malibu must be so proud. No need for two incumbents to go to debates (although they probably will out of respect for the process), knock on doors, ask for endorsements, answer pointed e-mails about why they did this-or-that…or DIDN'T do this-or-that. Congrats on the win, gents.

The formerly ignored southeast end–the "Lyon-Hoag" section of town in the Old Days, has three newcomers vying for the newly created, open seat. I applaud them. The development and traffic windmill they are going to push against is massive, but they are willing to try. Rachel Cyr, John Martos, and Peter Stevenson–welcome to the show. The Daily Journal quick survey had this description of them:

Rachel Cyr, a mother and businesswoman, is running against businessperson Peter Stevenson and John Martos in District 5.

I find that a little odd and worthy of oversight. I know Stevenson a bit and he has kids, so why is he a "businessperson" and not a "father and businessman". I don't know Martos, but he must deserve some descriptor. C'mon DJ, get it together. Don't make me expose your bias before we even get started.

Update 8/15: I just heard from the city clerk that John Martos did not finish the filing process (i.e. he effectively withdrew). He was listed as "pending" mid-last week. So District 5 is Cyr and Stevenson, head to head.

Posted by:
Joe

August 14, 2022

35 comments on 80% Voter Suppression in Burlingame
August 10, 2022

Late Summer Musings on Politics

If you have read the Voice for much of its 19 years on-line you have run into the occasional "think piece" that spices up the usual fare. The quiet weeks of mid-August before everyone gets back to our little town is a particularly good time for such a post. With plenty of time to read things like book reviews of books I'll never read (perhaps that is the purpose of a book review), some gems can pop out. Barton Swain at the WSJ did just such a favor in reviewing a new book about John Locke, the 17th century British philosopher. Locke is sometimes referred to as "the first liberal". Swain uses that as a jumping off point:

One way to sum up postwar American politics is to say that conservatives try to stop liberals from breaking the liberals’ own rules. The “rules” in this formulation are those of liberalism in the broadest sense: constitutional principles, the rule of law, rights-based protections.

“Liberal” regimes aren’t supposed to impose a particular understanding of the Good on their citizens; they’re meant to ensure local and individual freedoms and enable citizens to figure out what the Good is for themselves. But some liberals—typically the highly educated and privileged sort—tend to forget they are liberals and try to define righteousness for everybody. They do this by reallocating citizens’ wealth according to their own ideals, regulating private economic behavior, dictating to local communities how they should govern themselves, imposing protean codes of correct speech and behavior on everybody else, and so on. Conservatives, in this admittedly biased way of putting it, are there to stop liberals from indulging these illiberal impulses; to remind them, in other words, that they are liberals, not potentates.

Well put. We see the potentates very clearly in Sacramento; and the county and our city are not immune by any means. We see Sacramento "dictating to local communities how they should govern themselves" all over the place. It makes one wonder why someone who just wants to serve the community, instead of climbing the political ladder, would want to run for city council when Newsom, the state senate and assembly can dictate how everything will run? We have an election in 13 weeks. We will have at least one brand new city council member (in the new, open seat that was dictated to us), a new assemblywoman and a new federal House member. Here's hoping they will be truly Locke-style "liberals".

Posted by:
Joe

August 10, 2022

1 comment on Late Summer Musings on Politics
August 7, 2022

My, what a big crane you have

We last checked in on the Old Post Office project downtown (aka the Sares-Regis project) here. We are about eleven months after the groundbreaking ceremony and the Big Dig phase is over. This week an enormous construction crane was put in place. I was struck, metaphorically speaking, with how it towers over downtown. One of my regular downtown contacts told me that I missed the wild scene as the workers walked along the "arms" out to the end to put the counterweights in place on the short side (the left side in the photo). Unfortunately, I took the photo before I heard about the daring feat and the counterweights are perfectly hidden by the traffic light below. Does anyone think this will be the last big crane we see downtown?

Posted by:
Joe

August 7, 2022

2 comments on My, what a big crane you have
August 2, 2022

Solar variability: A tale of two days in B’game

I told you about my "going solar" a year ago here. So far, the system has been trouble-free and good amounts of juice are flowing back to PG&E. But here in B'game we are feeling the trailing effects of Tropical Storm Frank from down south and have had a few cloudy, muggy days this week. That got me curious as to how my solar system was responding. But first, let's look at Calmatters.org for the latest electricity news from Sacramento. On June 27, Calmatters reported that

The expansive energy bill that so angered clean-energy advocates and local officials — for its capitulation to short-term reliance on fossil-fuel and its closed-door negotiations — won lukewarm passage in California’s Legislature late Wednesday and was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom today.

Republican members railed about being shut out of brokering the details of the plan that would manage California’s fragile electricity grid during summer power drains. Democrats saw the bill’s reliance on dirty energy sources to prop up power generation as a backward step. During prolonged and pointed debate, the legislation was characterized as “lousy” and “crappy” — and those were the legislators who supported it.

“This was a crappy trailer bill that was dumped on us Sunday night,” complained Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat. “This was a rushed, unvetted fossil-fuel heavy response.” “It’s a lousy bill,” said Hayward Democratic Assemblymember Bill Quirk, “but it’s the best hope we have for keeping the lights on.”

You can click through to read the rest of the gnashing of teeth, but the bottom line for me was delivered by a Wall Street Journal piece titled "America's New Energy Crisis: Fossil fuel plants are closing faster than green alternatives can replace them." There is total (peak) capacity, baseload capacity, time of day needs, etc. but when push comes to shove, how do the rooftop panels right here in B'game behave? The Enphase system app conveniently does a year-over-year comparison, so we now know that a monsoony, cloudy day will drop solar energy production by 44.7%. Almost cut by half. It's gonna be hard to "keep the lights on" with that kind of green variability. Looks like Newsom did something right for a change.

THIS YEAR LAST YEAR

Posted by:
Joe

August 2, 2022

3 comments on Solar variability: A tale of two days in B’game
July 30, 2022

Calpers: Losses pile up and cities pay up

Watching the performance of the state's pension manager, CalPers, isn't quite like watching paint dry, but close. It is the largest pension fund in the country–and it has to be given how poorly the state is run up in Sacramento. While it may seem arcane and far away, here is the WSJ's take on why we should watch:

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System returned minus 6.1% for the year ended June 30, the fund said Wednesday. A multiyear downturn could be costly for states, towns and school systems around the country and by extension their residents, leading them to squeeze money from workers, taxpayers or other government services. Calpers’ stock portfolio returned minus 13.1%, while bonds returned minus 14.5%, the pension fund said. (Ed: Private equity made up some of the loss but relying on it is tricky as valuations are being written down left and right.)

The lackluster return will mean California towns, counties and school districts will face higher annual pension contributions during their 2024 or 2025 fiscal year. U.S. state and local pension funds have accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars since the last financial crisis in 2008, thanks to blockbuster returns from an 11-year bull market. Last year, huge gains in public and private equity markets drove median returns to nearly 27%, a 30-year record.

Some states also topped up their pension coffers with tax revenues from the stimulus-fueled Covid-19 recovery. But all of those gains have been outpaced by the growth in the cost of the benefits that state and local governments have promised.

We shall see what the impact on the city budget is going forward. We have been holding on pretty well — you can look here for the last update from March. I'll get around to addressing the move to raise local business tax rates in a bit, but Calpers' performance this year highlights the variability and risk associated with being tied so closely to the state.

Posted by:
Joe

July 30, 2022

4 comments on Calpers: Losses pile up and cities pay up
July 29, 2022

Bad parking in broad daylight

Let's kick-off our 19th year with an old favorite topic here at the Burlingame Voice–the crazy, illegal parking maneuvers people do all over town There are plenty of examples like here, here and here. Today's gem was right on Howard Ave. in front of the bank across from Park & Howard. Facing the wrong way against traffic and parallel parked across a diagonal parking space with no money in the meter. The good news was a Parking Enforcement Officer was on the scene as I walked by. How many tickets is that?

Posted by:
Joe

July 29, 2022

6 comments on Bad parking in broad daylight
July 26, 2022

Hey 19: The Voice turns nineteen

Another year has flown by since the Voice became legal. While things in Burlingame are constantly changing, especially over the last three or four years, things here at Ye Olde Voice stay the same. Same format sans advertising unlike the hodgepodge of unreadability that characterizes one of the neighboring blogs. Same categories on the right-hand frame that help you find something from the past. I think that feature and the backlinks in new posts mark the Voice as different and more useful than other sites. It's like writing a history book a week at a time. Commenters have the freedom to use their names or a pen name as old Ben Franklin approved of doing–or just read, which many do. And there is the same low monthly subscriber fee 🙂

If I had to point to any change, it would be the extension of the content a bit further afield than "all B'game all the time". Much of that extension stems from the impact forces outside town have on us. It's not just the County, CalTrans, CHSRA, SFO or the state jamming unwelcome laws, rules and regulations down cities' throats including ours. Our direct neighbors, Millbrae and San Mateo and to a lesser extent Hillsborough, take actions (or fail to take actions) that impact the quality of life in B'game. But the main focus is and will be right here–from Trousdale Dr. to Peninsula Ave. We talk about events and impacts in town and out with a strong preference for data, facts, and a healthy respect for the Law of Unintended Consequences.

A regular reader told me about pointing one of his neighbors to the Voice based on their conversation; thinking he would enjoy it. A few weeks later my friend said his neighbor told him he read "the whole thing for hours and this guy must be living in my head". I hope to stay welcome in there, neighbor.

Posted by:
Joe

July 26, 2022

7 comments on Hey 19: The Voice turns nineteen
July 17, 2022

RIP: Sea level rise parcel tax

Let's take a moment to reflect on the demise, at least for now, of the County parcel tax that was aimed at funding to protect from sea level rise. As the Daily Journal reported:

A parcel tax measure meant to back San Mateo County’s climate initiatives won’t appear on the November ballot after officials realized economic uncertainty was causing low polling support for the measure.

“A lot of this is a reflection of where we are with the economy — rising gas prices, inflation, the possibility of a recession. I think people are really concerned,” County Manager Mike Callagy said. “We really hope that someday we’ll be able to bring this back around in better times because these are situations that are not going to get better and are only going to get worse.”

While the Daily Post dug a little deeper and stated it bluntly under the headline "County tax didn't stand a chance; Poll data shows it would have failed by 11 points". The Post noted

The tax would have cost property owners 5 cents per square foot annually. For the owner of a 2,000 square-foot-home, the tax would have cost $100 per year. Poll respondents did express interest in some of the ideas behind the tax–primarily around reducing the impacts of drought by recycling water and reducing flammable brush.

Translation: Hey County, please worry about things that are right here, right now and not something that may or may not happen 50 years from now. Oh, and do it within the huge budget you have now.

Today's Chron has a long piece on "graywater" that you can get from recycling what comes out of the washing machine and your shower.

The technology isn’t new — greywater systems have been around for decades. But experts note that California, a state long familiar with extreme drought, still doesn’t have statewide incentives for people to install systems that can save thousands of gallons of water each year for a family of four. On a local level, incentives are not robust in the Bay Area either. Santa Clara County offers a $400 rebate through Valley Water, San Francisco offers $225, Contra Costa County and the East Bay Municipal District each offer up to $50, and other counties and water districts offer none at all.

Another benefit: Using greywater means people can continue to grow plants and trees in their yard — which can provide food and shade and support wildlife — rather than ripping them out in the face of water restrictions, advocates said. But while greywater has been shown to save both water and money, advocates and experts note that it’s faced a number of challenges to more widespread adoption over the years.

It goes on to discuss the permit process and costs, the lack of experienced installers, whether the water utilities really want us to do it and a general lack of public awareness — all things the County could actually work on within the bounds of its current budget and staff. In the meantime, we have a little respite from yet another parcel tax.

Posted by:
Joe

July 17, 2022

7 comments on RIP: Sea level rise parcel tax
July 15, 2022

Not all graffiti is all bad

Most of the graffiti around town is ugly and indecipherable. Here was an example from last month that was both before it was painted over. While it's all illegal, every once in a while, a real artist drops a bit in a less objectionable location. This example is on the side of the raised roadbed over by the entrance to Coyote Point as you turn towards the Humane Society. You can only see it if you are headed out of the park and look down. It gave me a laugh.

Posted by:
Joe

July 15, 2022

No comments on Not all graffiti is all bad