Morning News Round-Up -- 5.20.10: Calling all Steinbecks...

The big news today is that workers living in a labor camp in Pescadero may have been drinking contaminated water for a decade... this is a troubling story. The housing is part of Marchi farms and has been closed down by the County, although it seems families may still be living there. Where is John Steinbeck when you need him?

The Daily Journal gives a run down of the candidates in the 21st Assembly District... Rich Gordon, Yoriko Kishimoto, and Josh Becker... How many more run-downs do we really need?... Endorsements anyone?

Lee Duboc must be very pleased today... the pension reform initiative is heading to the ballot in Menlo Park. Could this be a Silicon Valley trend among cash-strapped cities? The Mayor of San Jose has been talking about asking voters in San Jose to vote to do away with the often-expensive binding arbitration...

The County is considering requiring (?) companies to offer employees a pre-tax transit option to get to work. This should help SamTrans and perhaps Caltrain and BART too...

Welcome to Millbrae, where the City might cut a program to help feed needy seniors... That's probably not fair of us, they are looking at cutting employees too...

You know the black box that records the last seconds of plane crashes... well Congresswoman Speier would like one in your car too... I'm sure privacy advocates will love that.

The Jefferson Union High School District may be asking voters to dig a little deeper into their wallets this fall... their polling looks good.

Silicon Valley has some serious interest in the upcoming Republican primaries for US Senate and Governor. New polls are out together. The first one actually confirms what Steve Poizner said a few weeks back -- that his race against Whitman is tightening... The second has Carly Fiorina leading (slightly) over Tom Campbell, but within the margin of error... (Joey Lucas will explain everything later...)

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.19.10: Post-Peloton Wednesday...

A post-peloton good morning to you all...

A good old-fashion debate happened this week between DMB (the folks that would build the Salt Pond development in Redwood City) and Save the Bay (who find the development atrocious)... the forum was in front of the Beresford-Hillsdale Neighborhood Association in San Mateo... Jobs versus Environment, Housing versus Environment, etc., etc.

The psych unit (alleged) sexual batterer pleaded not guilty yesterday...

Yesterday there was a story about how Menlo Park was pissed about higher rates for garbage collection... today Menlo Park is pissed (but supporting) higher water rates, which the City Council is raising by more than 15 percent a year for the next several years. Tomorrow there will be a story about how folks in Menlo Park don't like High-Speed Rail... What's next? A former City Council member who is unhappy about pension costs in the city?

Dude. Jon Mays at the Daily Journal gives us his two-cents about medical versus recreational marijuana use and the November ballot measure. It does not say that recreational use is way more fun... unfortunately.

What is it with San Mateo County-based sausage companies? Remember last year Columbus had a fire? Well, Sunday there was a fire at Marcel & Henri Charcuterie Francaise in South San Francisco. Who knew making sausage was so flammable...

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.18.10: Garbage Saga, The Original, Continues...

Ah, we thought the original Garbage Saga had ended and was giving way to the new Garbage Saga II in Pacifica... actually, Menlo Park and Atherton are asking questions about the original Garbage Saga and those two towns are pissed about it. (What aren't they pissed about though...) You see, the current garbage company, Allied Waste, signed a contract with Teamsters that extends beyond Allied Waste's contract with Peninsula cities... and it is pretty generous. Of course, Allied Waste won't be on the hook to pay it, and really, the new company that will take over in January, Recology, won't be on the hook either, garbage customers will be. Which puts the overseer of the garbage companies, Kevin McCarthy in a tough spot explaining things:

"On the face of it, it doesn't seem unreasonable. Certainly, I think we would have liked to have seen a shorter term. To say it's awkward to have a lame-duck service provider negotiating future agreements ... well, it's a very awkward situation."

What?!

There is no way you have forgotten about the series of sexual assaults at the County's psych ward perpetrated by patients on other patients... well, investigators are going to look to see if employees could have done something to prevent these attacks. Y'think? The psych unit isgetting another night nurse and security officer to help make things a bit more secure. Sounds like that move is a bit overdue...

A new housing proposal in San Mateo will be 50 percent affordable housing units developed in partnership between the Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition and Palo Alto Partners...

SSF Unified may go to the ballot in November for a bond measure... which bucks the trend of school districts going for parcel taxes. Bonds can't be used for operating expenses, just for bricks and mortar...

Dude... the Blue Heaven Collective, a medical-marijuana dispensary, was denied its license by the County. To be continued... no doubt.

Burlingame Voice shows that it knows and cares about something other than High-Speed Rail as they dive into the ongoing negotiations between Burlingame and their Police Department over pension and benefits. The Voice also shows they have a very good sense of humor, calling yesterday's piece: Friends with Benefits... (If you don't know what this funny, you are not hip at all...)

The Tour of California rolls through the Bay Area today and tomorrow... So shave your legs and head out...

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.17.10: Pension Reform in Burlingame? Lee Duboc is jealous...

Here's something... Burlingame and its police department have started the long road toward pension reform. From the County Times: "Police sergeants and captains in Burlingame have agreed to pay freezes through the end of the year and are ready to cut retiree benefits, the first union contract that includes pension reform for a city struggling to deal with escalating employee costs..." Menlo Park, and everyone else, are you reading this?

If you have twenty minutes, perhaps you should take a look at videos put together by the candidates for County Supervisor (Rich Gordon's seat)... they are on Coastsider and a bunch of other places...

If you are going to build in Belmont, you are going to need to build it green. Trying to become the Emerald City that many in Belmont already view themselves as, the City Council adopted a green building ordinance...

This has been on Watch Dog before, but the San Mateo County Times gets in on the Garbage Saga II unraveling in Pacifica, where Lionel Emde is suing the City of Pacifica over the rate hike tied to Recology's takeover of Coastside Scavenger. We might all want to care about this because Recology is taking over on this side of the hill too starting next year...

Finally, Ken Yeager and the rest of the Santa Clara County Supervisors (except Don Gage and George Shirakawa) get props from Dorothy Dimitre in the San Mateo Daily Journal for their fast food toy ban...

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.14.10: Where to put that hitching post?

The developers who want to build on the Salt Flats in Redwood City released a poll yesterday that showed that folks in Redwood City support development on the Salt Flats in Redwood City. What else would it show?

Belmont is setting itself up for some budgetary unrest... while Belmont cuts some services and some spending, firefighters are getting a raise as they spend down fire department reserves as they "quit" San Carlos...

Redwood City School District finally has a contract with its teachers. It has (only) taken a year...

Cabrillo Unified (on the coast) has a new deal with their unions too... but coastside the deal is "unspecified"... which must be very reassuring to taxpayers footing the bill.

Also on the education front, we get this headline announcing the Academic Performance Index results for the County: Test scores show most Santa Clara, San Mateo counties students reaching state goal... as if "most" is the goal. You can find your neighborhood school's listing here...

Some Daily Journal political endorsements for you this morning: Yes on Measure G - the Community College Parcel Tax... and Unelected Supervisor Carole Groom's mission to drop the "unelected" title is supported by Jon Mays and friends...

The day-time home break-in spree is still going on in San Bruno. police would like your help if you know anything...

And while folks in San Bruno (and Redwood City School District and SamTrans and the Community College District) deal with real challenging issues, the good folks in Portola Valley are deciding about where to site a new hitching post... seriously.

Finally, the Burlingame Voice chimes in on something other than High-Speed Rail... this time on test scores and teachers' unions...

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.13.10: A few minutes late today... I was biking to work

We apologize in advance to Supervisor Carole Groom, because for the next little while, we are going to revert back to what we started calling her when she first got appointed: unelected. Since she has served on the Board of Supervisors she has been unelected, and now she is gearing up for her big race for Supervisor so folks can ligitimately vote FOR Unelected Supervisor Carole Groom. Of course she is going to win by a huge margin, which reinforces what Watch Dog (and others) thought long ago -- that Supervisors should have called for a special election so that Groom doesn't have a seat for life... What brought all this up? The Daily Journal looks into the "race"...

Remember how much fun Governor Gray Davis had with the Vehicle License Fee? It cost him his job... and put the Terminator into the Governor's mansion (?). Anyway, San Mateo County may be getting its own VLF if they vote favorably in November. The money will go to congestion management... Perhaps Gray Davis is free to do the TV ads for the campaign...

That beautiful orange and black "The Times" sign just off 101 will be replaced with 74 housing units and a self-storage complex... paved paradise, put up housing and storage...

Live shows again at the Fox Theatre? Send thanks to Eric Lochtefeld, a San Mateo

entrepreneur...

San Bruno made the seemingly smart decision to forgo red-light cameras because it was going to cost them money, as opposed to bolster city coffers. Plus, now you can't catch us...

Shocking... Belmont needs to raise sewer rates...

Another shocker...

The Burlingame Voice is on part 16 of their anti-High-Speed Rail campaign, this time talking about Union Pacific's opposition.

In other blog news, PP Examiner's Bruce goes into the voting records of the Assembly 21 candidates... which proves that he is getting the same emails that Watch Dog is getting featuring hit-pieces from one campaign on another.

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.12.10: Move Your Horse!

The courting of San Carlos police services is in full effect. Redwood City and the Sheriff's Officepresented their credentials to the San Carlos City Council. "We have a really, really fast car..." Redwood City police didn't say... "Oh yeah, well our uniforms have more starch..." The Sheriff's Office didn't say...

Also doing their best to court a local community is the High-Speed Rail Authority... and it isn't going that well if you read this story about a High-Speed Rail presentation in Atherton... Why bother?

From the big trains to the little ones...

Caltrain is in a deep financial hole, and Michael Scanlon was talking about it yesterday to the San Carlos Chamber of Commerce...

If it is the second week in May in California it can only mean one thing... teacher pink slips... there will be a bunch locally. But not in Menlo Park City Schools...

Skyline Stables may be going away to make way for a water storage tank. Thank the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission for this one and get your horse to Portola Valley quick...