The Burlingame Voice – Page 45 – Dedicated to Empowering and Informing the Burlingame Community

January 1, 2023

NYE Deluge: Floating down the Avenew

The Pineapple Express arrived right on time to make a mess of New Year's Eve. I only ventured onto El Camino once yesterday and it was before the stuff really hit the fan. My mother-in-law drove on it later and a splash from an adjacent car knocked her windshield wiper right off the car! But we know ECR is a drainage disaster. What about the Ave? It seems the deluge combined with a king tide that was expected, per the Chron

The tides will be at their most extreme on Friday when the high tide of 7.12 feet will arrive at 10:24 a.m. and the low tide will dip to -1.74 feet at 5:26 p.m. — a sea change of nearly 9 feet in about seven hours. Saturday’s high tide rolls in at 11:14 a.m. at 7.09 feet with a low tide of -1.77 feet at 6:15 p.m. A high tide of 6.88 feet will appear at 12:06 p.m. on Sunday.

The king tide combined with the National Weather Service measurements shows the magnitude and also that this isn't a 100-year flood–more like a 30-year flood.

Our San Francisco Downtown site hit 5.46” in the 24 hours of December 31st. This makes it the second wettest day in the 170+ years of records at that site, just 0.08” less than 1st place (11/5/1994) with 5.54”.

It also highlights a design challenge with the seawall that is being proposed for sea-level rise. Keeping Bay waters out is one thing. Letting rainfall out is quite another. Friday's king tide was a shade bigger, but not until the deluge came on Saturday did we have this problem:

I hope this video plays for everyone.

Download Flood vid 123122

Update Jan 5th. Here is the downed Euc on the Caltrain tracks that PSA noted in the comments. Thanks to the intrepid photog who captured it for me.

Posted by:
Joe

January 1, 2023

3 comments on NYE Deluge: Floating down the Avenew
December 31, 2022

Favorite Post of 2022….and 2021

Let's close out the year with a quick look back at my favorite post of the year. I was thinking it would be Planning for a Rollicking Rollins Rd. We heard a lot this year about how proud the city council is of the "new neighborhood" going up in the East-East side–not to be confused with the regular East side that is demarcated by the railroad tracks and the North Park apartments. The East-East side is also demarcated by the tracks but is north of Broadway and is newly residential. The Rollicking post was a fantasy of mine that imagined all the things that need to be done for it to really be a "new neighborhood" actually had been done. But it can't be my favorite for 2022 since it is dated December 26, 2021. Let's call it my defered favorite of '21. Check it out.

That leaves State Auditor: Housing "requirement" numbers way off from May 6th as my 2022 favorite. It is the post that I find myself bringing up in conversations with all sorts of people. The three paragraphs I excerpted in the post are damning of the whole process of assigning crazy high numbers of you-must-build-units from the state. Tom Elias as the Daily Post is on a similar page as me. His column on Wednesday noted that

Several cities have begun to fight parts of today's state domination of land use. Four Los Angeles County cities — Redondo Beach, Torrance, Carson and Whittier — are seeking a court order negating the 2021 Senate Bill 9, which allows single family homes to be replaced by as many as six units, with cities unable to nix any such projects….No one can predict whether or not courts will find the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have vastly overreached in their power grab, which is all for the sake of increased density and based on unfounded predictions by bureaucrats who answer to no one.

Bingo. Wouldn't it be nice if those four cities got some help? And in other news, California led the nation in net domestic out migration from July 2021 to July 2022 at -343,230. That's about like all of Stockton getting up and moving out of state. New York came in second but is the highest per capita. Either way, the State Auditor is onto something and should get more airtime in 2023. Happy New Year.

Posted by:
Joe

December 31, 2022

No comments on Favorite Post of 2022….and 2021
December 28, 2022

BSD: Where’s Johnny today?

Things are a mess in our education system nationwide. Today's WSJ has a Stanfoo economist estimating that missed learning in K-12 from lockdowns will cost the typical kid $70K in lifetime earnings. Yikes. Closer to home the story is not much better. The Daily Journal has a piece that compares absenteeism rates around the County and while Burlingame is "better than average", things are still not good.

A higher number of San Mateo County students were chronically absent from school in the 2021-22 school year compared to years prior, according to newly released state data, revealing the sustained effects of the pandemic on public education. At the state level, about 30% of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10% of the school year. Students from most ethnic and challenging socioeconomic backgrounds experienced even higher rates of absenteeism.

The new interim B'game superintendent, on the job for two weeks as noted here, has some comments

Burlingame and San Carlos school districts fell into the medium category, San Carlos with an absentee rate of 5.7% and Burlingame with a rate of 9.2%. Recognizing the challenges of providing a robust education to students who are under more pressure to stay home when sick, Marla Silversmith, Burlingame School District interim superintendent, said her staff worked hard to connect students with their classwork while remote, whether through paper packages or online platforms.

Students who did complete the work were given attendance credit, helping to reduce the district’s absentee rate. Just more than 9% of students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year, about 4% greater than the 2018-2019 figures.

I put "better than average" in quotes because having about 10% of all kids miss 10+% of school seems like a dire situation to me. In a 180-school-day year, that's missing three and a half weeks or more! San Mateo-Foster City, San Bruno Park, South San Francisco Unified and Redwood City were all above 20% — or missing at least seven weeks of school! Maybe instead of 87,000 new IRS agents, we should hire 87,000 new truant officers?

Posted by:
Joe

December 28, 2022

18 comments on BSD: Where’s Johnny today?
December 23, 2022

City Council: Another year, another rotation

The city council returned to chambers in City Hall Monday night for the first time in almost three years. The occasion was the annual rotation of the mayor and vice mayor roles. Thankfully, B'game stuck to established procedure unlike San Mateo and Millbrae this year. Chaos ensued in both places. Some things were different in chambers. For one, the heat seemed like it needed some maintenance work from a master technician. Each chair on the dais and in the staff area was equipped with a screen and two large screens have been installed on the sidewalls to accommodate hybrid live/Zoom meetings. Zoomers' voices are now piped into the PA system giving a bit of an eerie feel to comments. I may have to comment remotely sometime just to hear the effect!

The big event of the evening was Ann O'Brien Keighran's retirement after 17 years on the council and 7 years on the Planning Commission. The DJ piece with some quotes is here. Plenty of regular locals turned out for the event as resolutions were read and plaques presented. Diane Papan read her own resolution and Dave Pine's staff member, Linda Wolin, stood in for Pine. Ann's council peers and some members of the public recounted some of the big events of her tenure; with the Safeway project bringing up many memories. David Bowlby, a Safeway consultant back in the day, recounted meetings with Ann and my wife who were the Safeway sub-committee members. He also recalled meeting with the Citizens for a Better Burlingame. Just hearing the CBB name mentioned reminded me of all those morning meetings to strategize and commiserate over the original monster Safeway design. Historical Society president Jen Pfaff and my wife dug deep into the Society archives to construct a scrapbook for Ann that captured many of the early events in her 24-year service including the time that Joe Galligan tried to get her and dearly missed Stan Vistica replaced on Planning. Ah, the Old Days.

Ann concluded her time on the dais with remarks that brought tears to her eyes near the end–even as she said she wouldn't let that happen. I had a nice view sitting behind her parents, Denis and Katie O'Brien, as mom and daughter reached for tissues at the same time.

Following Ann's closing remarks, Ricardo Ortiz was sworn in by Diane Papan. Michael Brownrigg was sworn in by Library Trustee Kris Cannon and her husband Jim while thanking long-time advisor Jeff Londer. Finally, new councilman Peter Stevenson was sworn in by city manager Lisa Goldman. Many locals showed up for this renewed annual event especially from Peter's new district 5 including local DJ and disaster preparedness expert Jeff Tateosian and commercial realtor Jim Sobel. I chatted with Burlingame Neighborhood Network board members David Harris and Ann Hinckle, local realtor Erik Winkler and our local waste wizard Joe La Mariana of ReThink Waste.

As witnessed by the night's events and attendees, B'game still has a small-town feel. I have no idea how long it will last given the notion that we must comply-or-else with Sacramento's demands for growth even as the state population shrinks. But for one night it still felt small. Here is the new dais set-up and Ann Keighran's appearance on the new big screen. Happy retirement–she's gonna love it.

Posted by:
Joe

December 23, 2022

8 comments on City Council: Another year, another rotation
December 22, 2022

Stanfoolery and “bad words”

Herb Caen used to refer to Stanford as Stanfoo, but the university is looking more like Stanfools lately. In the interest of free speech which we value here at the Voice, I'll post a recent WSJ editorial that is so ridiculous that it merits keeping around for when the next bit of tomfoolery pops up in the language arena:

Parodists have it rough these days, since so much of modern life and culture resembles the Babylon Bee. The latest evidence is that Stanford University administrators in May published an index of forbidden words to be eliminated from the school’s websites and computer code, and provided inclusive replacements to help re-educate the benighted.

Call yourself an “American”? Please don’t. Better to say “U.S. citizen,” per the bias hunters, lest you slight the rest of the Americas. “Immigrant” is also out, with “person who has immigrated” as the approved alternative. It’s the iron law of academic writing: Why use one word when four will do?

You can’t “master” your subject at Stanford any longer; in case you hadn’t heard, the school instructs that “historically, masters enslaved people.” And don’t dare design a “blind study,” which “unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.” Blind studies are good and useful, but never mind; “masked study” is to be preferred. Follow the science.

“Gangbusters” is banned because the index says it “invokes the notion of police action against ‘gangs’ in a positive light, which may have racial undertones.” Not to beat a dead horse (a phrase that the index says “normalizes violence against animals”), but you used to have to get a graduate degree in the humanities to write something that stupid.

The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative is a “multi-phase” project of Stanford’s IT leaders. The list took “18 months of collaboration with stakeholder groups” to produce, the university tells us. We can’t imagine what’s next, except that it will surely involve more make-work for more administrators, whose proliferation has driven much of the rise in college tuition and student debt. For 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrative staff.

The list was prefaced with (to use another forbidden word) a trigger warning: “This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.”

Evidently it was all too much for some at the school to handle. On Monday, after the index came to light on social media, Stanford hid it from public view. Without a password, you wouldn’t know that “stupid” made the list.

One can only imagine the reaction if you told a Chief Master Sergeant in the Army or Air Force that his or her rank needs to be edited for political correctness. Then you would hear some forbidden words for sure!

Posted by:
Joe

December 22, 2022

16 comments on Stanfoolery and “bad words”
December 19, 2022

Solar hypocrisy is expensive

Watching the gyrations of the intertwined energy and transportation sectors of our economy is frustrating at best. Anyone with a modicum of critical thinking skills has to wonder what our politicians and bureaucrats are thinking? Last week the CPUC kneecapped the rooftop solar market. The Comicle writes

For new customers, reduce the amount utilities’ pay them for excess power by at least 75% compared with current rates. The change would not apply to residents with existing solar systems.

Because residents and businesses with solar panels generally have smaller energy bills, they contribute less to a utility company’s fixed costs, such as transmission and distribution networks, which are passed on to ratepayers. As a result, non-solar residents, including low-income residents and renters, carry more of the cost burden.

The solar rules increased bills for customers who do not have rooftop solar by $3.37 billion in 2021, growing to $4.5 billion so far this year, according to the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office.

See what they did there? People with panels "contribute less to transmission and distribution" costs. But what about generation costs? They pour private capital–lots of it– into helping the utilities avoid those costs. Another case of lies, damned lies and statistics. The other push is to get people to add batteries when they put in the panels, so the load is spread better throughout the day and night. Good idea for a lot of reasons, but crazy expensive and getting more so as the metals that go into batteries get more expensive. I'll bet the CPUC Public Advocates Office isn't spending any time on looking at where those metals come from (hint: Russia, China, the Congo with little environmental protections and some slave labor).

Speaking of grid stability, how does the all-out push to force people to buy EVs (by 2035 in California) fit? The president of Toyota had this to say this week

President Akio Toyoda said he is among the auto industry’s silent majority in questioning whether electric vehicles should be pursued exclusively, comments that reflect a growing uneasiness about how quickly car companies can transition. “That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.”

Toyota is still pursuing plug-in hybrids and hydrogen and they have their eye on the cost of all of this

Sticker prices for electric vehicles have also jumped this year because of the rising cost of battery materials, limiting the pool of buyers who can afford one.

In a debate between the "silent majority" that designs, builds and has to sell cars at a profit and the CPUC and Newsom, I'm more comfortable with people who look at all angles of the question–it's good that they aren't staying totally silent. Newsom in particular has his focus elsewhere, but his ex-wife weighed in on him this week.

Kimberly Guilfoyle made a rare public comment about her ex-husband, California Governor Gavin Newsom, on Sunday. “In California, they have vowed to get rid of gas-powered cars. A bunch of winners over there. Ask me how I know. I got news for him. He ain’t making it to the White House!”

In the meantime, rooftop solar got more expensive, EVs got more expensive, and electricity got more expensive. But at least there is more "equity".

Posted by:
Joe

December 19, 2022

8 comments on Solar hypocrisy is expensive
December 10, 2022

San Mateo council chaos as a harbinger

I've had a motivation challenge on making new posts since last week's very difficult post, so here are a couple of simple "just taking notice" posts to get back on track. Our southern neighbor, San Mateo, is in city council turmoil as noted by the DJ in both the news pieces, a deluge of letters to the editor and Mark Simon's column. With three new members and an open seat from Diane Papan winning an Assembly seat, the 2-2 tug-of-war over the mayorship is a sight to behold. Simon notes

Most of the time, the title of mayor rotates between councilmembers and is largely ceremonial — the person presides at council meetings, cuts ribbons, gets to deliver a largely fungible “state of the city” address and is the center of attention for a year. Ah, not this time.

Having been married to a mayor, I can tell you there's a bit more to it than that. Committee assignments, setting the bi-monthly agenda, certain management tasks and setting the direction of inter-city interactions are some examples. But all of that aside for the moment, we should ask if the chaos in San Mateo is a harbinger of things to come in B'game? Back to Simon

There were announcements of recall efforts targeting both Diaz Nash and Lee. Some flatly declared that blocking the election of a mayor violated the city charter, which it does not, and that it ran contrary to published guidelines on how the council is supposed to elect a mayor, which it does. But guidelines are, you know, only guidelines. Monday night’s (city council meeting) hootenanny laid bare some significant incisions within the body politic.

Not the least of which is that district elections have wrought a profound change on local politics, including an unprecedented political immunity. Opponents can launch a recall effort to oust Diaz Nash, but it is likely she and her views are completely safe in her district.

Tiny little districts (ours average about 6,000 people each and voter turnout is usually around 15-18%) may make for safe seats or they may make recalls easier to qualify–or both. The time, money and hassle of special elections and spot campaigning of it all is completely predictable. And sad.

Posted by:
Joe

December 10, 2022

2 comments on San Mateo council chaos as a harbinger
December 10, 2022

Interim Superintendent at BSD

In a mid-school year change, the DJ is reporting

Burlingame School District Superintendent Chris Mount-Benites is taking a leave of absence for an undetermined amount of time, leading to Assistant Superintendent Marla Silversmith to take on the role in the interim, officials announced in an email Friday.

“Ms. Silversmith has been with the Burlingame School District for five years and has acted as interim superintendent previously. We know that our community is in great hands under her guidance and leadership. We are grateful to Ms. Silversmith for stepping into this role,” the email statement read.

I wish Marla luck. There is no lack of issues at hand at BSD from budgets to "workforce housing" to whatever the winter may bring Covid-wise to planning for major inflows of students from the roughly 1,500 new units of housing coming on-line in B'game.

Posted by:
Joe

December 10, 2022

18 comments on Interim Superintendent at BSD
December 4, 2022

Jazzman passes: A terrible loss for B’game

This is a very difficult post for me to write but acknowledging the passing of one of the coolest guys in B'game is necessary. I first met Andrew Speight eighteen months ago and wrote about him here. His vision for local jazz of the highest order continued to blossom as I noted here. He was the band leader for the regular mid-week gigs at the Broadway Grill and I last saw him there on Wednesday–the day before he died. You can get more of a sense of the man from this NBC Bay Area report. Andrew was a mainstay of the opening weekend at the new Keys Jazz Bistro in North Beach, as noted by his friend Simon Rowe in the NBC piece, and I told him so between sets that night.

My relationship with Andrew evolved from new acquaintance to being good buddies over the last eighteen months. I was a regular at his House of Bop club on Capuchino Ave. and he was a regular at my place for drinks, music and planning about bringing more jazz to B'game. Regardless of how obscure of a jazz record that was playing when he walked in, he would pick out the artists by name and expound on their playing and their personalities. After he did that with a particularly unusual album I was playing, I expressed amazement at the skill and he said, "it's not hard when you have played with the guy yourself". I often felt like I was sitting in his SF State class instead of my side yard.

The loss is hard to grasp when you understand what we had planned for B'game. His first album since the 1980's was recorded at his house last year. It's mixed, mastered and in the queue to be pressed with the working title "Live in Burlingame". The LP would help promote a Burlingame Jazz Festival that he hoped to arrange the weekend before or after the Monterey Jazz Festival when a number of his artist friends would be passing through the Bay Area and would be available for gigs. The plan was to have two or three venues to allow for the local kids to get some stage time. Andrew was an educator to the end. We lost a gem of Burlingame and all that could have been. Here he is at Keys Jazz Bistro on November 12. RIP.

Update: The local jazz community sent Andrew Speight off in style yesterday (Dec. 18) with a three-hour jam session at Broadway Grill. About 40 musicians sat in with the closing number featuring a 5 horn front line.

Posted by:
Joe

December 4, 2022

9 comments on Jazzman passes: A terrible loss for B’game
November 26, 2022

Does the whole County need remedial driving class?

This post has been on my radar for about two months since I spoke to a man-about-town who lives a half block off of the California Dr. speedway. He told me about a guy in a new Corvette who blasted down California, but an officer just happened to be nearby for another reason. One got caught, but he says most don't. Then last week I was at the ECR-Howard Ave. Safeway intersection when two incidents happened within 10 seconds of each other. First, someone seems to have forgotten that drivers coming straight at you from across the intersection have right-of-way over you turning left. Horn blows. And then someone driving west on Howard decides to do the medium speed "California stop" turning north on ECR. Except there are three people well into the crosswalk. The pedestrian closest was fortunately agile and quick and he needed to be to avoid spending a week in the hospital. This is a regular occurrence there. Lyon-Hoag has been complaining about this for years.

The stories go on. A merchant on B'way told me a pedestrian did get clipped there a week ago even with the seizure-inducing crosswalk lights going off. That's before jaywalking becomes legal statewide in the pursuit of "racial justice". And of course, there is the absolutely tragic, heart-breaking story from Redwood CIty of a 23-year-old racing a 17-year-old in a BMW M-series at 80-90 mph on ECR at 8pm. Two parents killed and twin 7-year-girls orphaned. You can see drivers doing 50+ on ECR in B'game all the time even with the lousy road surface. Maybe we really don't want it fixed?

Does the whole County need remedial driving class? Maybe, but for sure we need more traffic enforcement–a lot more. Recall during the 2020 Townhall on "use of force" when my second question was asked: "If the city allocated 10% more funding to BPD today, how would it utilize the funds?" This was during the nationwide idiocy called "defund the police". Chief Matteucci took about 1.5 seconds to respond, "I would add more traffic enforcement". Exactly! But our city council doesn't quite get it yet. During the non-debate prior to the last non-election, three candidates were asked about public safety. As Russ wrote in the post

In short, (Ricardo Ortiz) stated that the council has not been asked to increase the number of patrol personnel, so by inference, there is no need to increase the number of individuals on the BPD. Wait? What?

I think it's time we asked for a couple more cops on the street. I would say "let's get ahead of this curve" but we are already behind the curve so let's just catch-up. None of the statistics show the near misses, but if you are regularly walking, riding or driving in town you see them. In the meantime, keep your head on a swivel.

Posted by:
Joe

November 26, 2022

10 comments on Does the whole County need remedial driving class?