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Becoming a SamTrans bus driver isn’t just good for you, but also for riders, the transit agency says.

With a bus operator shortage forcing a reduction in services, SamTrans has launched a Drive With Us recruitment campaign that in part offers paid training for up to 10 weeks.

The campaign, accessed here, features information on minimum requirements, training dates, bus operator duties, an upcoming class schedule, and the benefits of becoming a bus operator at SamTrans.

On Jan. 19, SamTrans, which has 312 operators and needs to fill 337 positions, suspended EC Rapid service due to the driver shortage. and cancelled other runs.

The ECR Rapid launched in June 2018 to provide faster service on El Camino Real and had been carrying almost 500 riders per day, the transit agency said. However, the route’s design needed multiple operators at the ready, straining the staffing levels.

SamTrans adjusts its scheduling and service operations three times a year to take into account changing traffic impacts, travel patterns and bus operator availability. Additional operators will presumably lead to more service.

As part of the Drive With Us campaign, SamTrans is also creating a employee referral program and attending recruitment events.

Photo credit: SamTrans

A Harley-Davidson dealership may be coming to San Carlos.

At tonight’s 7 p.m. meeting, the San Carlos Planning Commission is set to review a request for a conditional use permit amendment to allow automobile sales at 835 East San Carlos Ave., a heavy-industrial zone bordering U.S. Highway 101 to the east, across from the Residence Inn Hotel, according to city documents.

The planned San Carlos location would be a relocation of Harley-Davidson’s current facility at 333 Corey Way in South San Francisco, and would be known as Silicon Valley Harley-Davidson.

According to the plans, the existing 20,300 square foot commercial building at 835 East San Carlos Ave. includes two tenants, a 7,200 square foot space that is vacant and a 13,100 square foot space currently occupied by Pioneer Millworks, which plans to move to a new location within 12 months.

Rich Gargano and Cliff Chester, who own Harley-Davidson dealerships in Morgan Hill, San Jose and San Francisco as well as general merchandise-only retail outlets in Monterey and San Francisco, plan to locate the auto sales facility within the 7,200 square foot space, then later expand into the adjacent Pioneer Millwork space, occupying 15,000 to 20,300 square feet of the building, the city said.

“The San Carlos location will actually be a smaller footprint than what we currently have in South San Francisco by almost half the square footage and is projected to have sales around $10 [million] in the first year.

Harley-Davidson hopes to hold special events as is customary at its other locations including Thursday Night Live with food and entertainment, a once-per-year Open House in conjunction with the new model year release, and a Christmas toy drive that has a group ride leaving the facility at 9 a.m. to deliver toys and donations.

While Harley-Davidson sells and repairs motorcycles, the business is expected to generate significantly less traffic than current and recent and existing site tenants, particularly when Pioneer Millwork vacates, the city said. In addition, the business doesn’t work on bikes older than 2000 nor provide noisy dynamometer engine testing.

And don’t worry about the clientele, owners say. While the business proposal states Harley Davidson “still comes with a preconceived notion of loud motorcycles and rebellious behavior,” it states today’s average rider is “married and in his 50s with an average income of over $90,000.” The business also said Harley-Davidson has also been promoting rider education classes and new products such as electric motorcycles and bicycles.

The Planning Commission’s hearing is set to take place at 6 p.m. tonight in Council Chambers at 600 Elm St. in San Carlos.

Photo: A Harley-Davidson at the Mission Moto Harley-Davidson store in San Francisco.

San Mateo County Libraries is rolling into the New Year with a pilot program that allows cardholders to check out a bicycle.

Book-A-Bike launched as a pilot program at Belmont Library on Jan. 6 and allows adult cardholders to rent a bike with a valid library card.

Four low-maintenance bicycles purchased for the program are loaned out and due back the same day, 30 minutes prior to closing. They come equipped with a helmet with a GoPro mount, a basket for cargo, a bike light, a bike lock, and first aid kit. Bicycle components include a carbon drive belt, three speed internal gear hub, and flat free tires.

Patrons must sign an online waiver and can fetch the helmet and key to unlock the bike from the Library’s front desk.

San Mateo County Libraries says it has become one of just a handful of library systems in the nation to offer bicycles for free checkout.

Book-A-Bike derived from the Libraries’ Pitch-It contest, where staff propose news ideas for the library system and vote to implement their favorite. The idea was pitched by Community Technology Specialist David Vargas.

For more information, click here.

A proposal to install a bicycle pump track in Belmont is the topic of a community meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 15.

The City of Belmont is hosting a meeting at 7 p.m. at Twin Pines Lodge, at 40 Twin Pines Lane, to discuss the findings of a preliminary feasibility study on a bike pump track, an idea first pitched by community members in 2016.

A bike pump track features dirt rollers and berms and is designed to be ridden without pedaling, as riders gain momentum by creating “pumping” motions with their upper body.

At a Belmont Parks & Recreation Commission meeting in September last year, Commissioner Thaddeus Block, himself a cyclist, said the proposal maintains support from the local cycling community. Such tracks can be relatively inexpensive, from $20,000 to $40,000, and can be built as part of a volunteer effort, Block said. Such venues provide a safe place for people of all ages to work on their bicycling skills and encourage exercise, he added.

In 2018, an ad hoc committee was formed to explore the topic and consider and evaluate potential sites for either a permanent or small pilot track. Sites that have been considered include the Sports Complex, Hidden Canyon, Water Dog Lake (near top of the John Brooks trail), and the Oracle parking lot by the Sports Complex. The proposal, however, remains in an early planning stage that aims to gather community feedback before presenting a plan to City Council.

Photo credit: A bike pump track in the City of Leavenworth, Wash., by the City of Leavenworth.

One industry dominates, lots of building going on and the weather is great. A capsule summary of Redwood City today? No. It’s how grade school students described the town in 1899. 

A four-inch-thick binder containing the children’s work was found among documents left in the estate of the late local historian Nita Spangler, according to Ellen Crawford, President of the Historic Union Cemetery Association. Spangler was a leading figure in the fight to put the cemetery on the National Register of Historic Places, which became a reality in 1983. 

“I’m not sure if the writings were essays, a contest, tests or just what,” said Crawford. One thing is for sure, however: The handwriting is very impressive. “Flowing script” would be an adequate description.  The papers overwhelmingly contain a brief history of Redwood City followed by remarks about employment, the weather and other subjects. They are very much alike, leading Crawford to conclude that a teacher assigned the writing topic to students.   

For example, ninth grader Stanley Rice wrote that during San Francisco’s early years, its homes were “made of redwood lumber which was largely obtained from the mountains” southwest of Redwood City. He goes on to note that in 1899 “Redwood City can boast of one of the largest tanneries, and it is claimed that the best leather is made here.” The tannery was Frank’s Tannery, the largest single employer in Redwood City, which had a population of about 2,000 in 1899. The number of residents would reach 2,400 in the census just 10 years later. 

It’s not known if the papers were graded, but Claire Murray certainly would have been a contender for an A, particularly for her clarity of both handwriting and expression of ideas. However, she had a bit of a problem with “there” and “their,” but so does Spellcheck. There is an air of the skeptic in this ninth grader’s work, unlike the others who boasted of Redwood City’s plusses, as if the writers got help from the chamber of commerce. 

Murray noted Redwood City’s advantages, particularly a fine school system that could boast of a “high school which is supported by many of the wealthiest families in the county.” She also mentioned the leading disadvantage – “its nearness to San Francisco, which takes the home trade away.”  She said the Southern Pacific railroad fare was very high, adding “what we want is an opposition company so as to cheapen the rates.” The big boosters included Hester Louie, who was impressed by the amount of building going on “all the time” in a city that had its “own water and lights for the street.”  Ninth grader Albert Michael must have done some homework, concluding that the mild climate was caused “by the mountains on the north and east which shelter it from the cold winds and the warm Japan stream which comes from the west.” 

Ninth grader Gertrude Hansen, possibly a member of the seafaring Hansen family famous in Redwood City’s pioneering days, wrote about lumber being hauled to boats waiting at what today would be the area near Courthouse Square. “It is said that as many as seventy oxen teams have been seen at this landing in one day,” he wrote. Eighth grader Arthur Thompson also mentioned the importance of the maritime industry, reporting that “as many as twenty sail and steam vessels were counted loading and unloading a variety of cargoes along the wharfs.” 

As noted earlier, the most important business in the city was Frank’s Tannery, which was located near what today is a shopping mall adjacent to U.S. 101 that, until recently, was home to Toys “R” Us.  “Many families depended on Frank’s Tannery to make sure they had food on their table and clothes on their back,” Redwood City historian and Realtor Cliff Keith wrote on the SF Bay Homes blog. Frank’s Tannery “was the structure everyone in town knew.” The tannery, which was nearly a mile long and had its own railroad as well as a fleet of schooners, closed in 1959. In 1968, fire roared through the old wooden buildings and what was left was condemned and demolished in 1970. 

 This story was originally published in the January print edition. 

Due to a shortage of operators, SamTrans is set to suspend its ECR Rapid bus line from Daly City to Redwood City effective Jan. 19.

“SamTrans, like other transit agencies in the region, is working to recruit and train new operators. Route ECR continues to provide service along the El Camino Real corridor,” the agency said.

The ECR Rapid line launched in summer 2018 in order to speed up travel time along the El Camino Real route, the agency’s highest performing route with approximately 9,000 riders per weekday, the transit agency stated at the time.  No timetable was given for the Rapid line’s return.

Transit agencies nationwide are dealing with operator shortages that have forced service reductions, including SF Muni. Operator pay isn’t as competitive as it once was, City Lab states in its analysis of the shortage, adding that agencies are struggling to replace a steady exodus of retiring drivers.

Suspension of the ECR Rapid line was among a number of service modifications announced by SamTrans. The transit agency reviews its service three times per year, aiming to respond to traffic impacts, customer travel patterns and other variables like the summer break for schools. Its next schedule change is expected in June.

It is sad, agrees real estate broker Scott Fuller, who founded a website in July 2018 called LeavingTheBayArea.com, that a state called “golden” has lost its luster for so many.

“I can say for myself that I never thought of leaving California,” adds Fuller, a Californian since 1984.  “…A lot of the people that we talk to and that we work with say the same thing, that they never had any intention to move.”  

Some leave voluntarily, but factors that are out of their control force others to search for greener pastures.

“It’s hard to argue that there’s anywhere else that has better weather, more activity, more to do and has a better proximity to just about everything,” Fuller says. “I think a lot of people have come to grips with this recently and it isn’t something that they were planning.”  

It’s the proverbial water cooler Topic A—whether California’s chronic problems, magnified in the high-priced Bay Area, have reached a tipping point. Start the list of seeming “intractables” with housing prices, congestion and homelessness. Add to that the fact that the top state income tax rate (13.3 percent) is the highest in the nation; the 2017 federal income tax law upped the ante by capping deductions for state, local and property taxes at $10,000.  

Sales taxes on the Peninsula have inched up and are approaching the 10.25 percent levels hit by about a dozen Los Angeles-area cities.  When 2013 began, the rate in Atherton, Belmont, Menlo Park, Redwood City and San Carlos was 8.5 percent. It’s now 9.75 percent in Belmont and Redwood City and 9.25 percent in the other three. That’s still below the state champ – Santa Fe Springs at 10.5 percent, passed November 2018 – but new proposals are being discussed for Bay Area transportation taxes. 

Californians live in anticipation of “the Big One” but the catastrophic wildfires of the past few years set off a different shock to the system. October’s widespread Public Safety Power Shutoffs – even in urban areas – may have, as PG&E Corp. contends, prevented more fires from starting. But the prediction by company President and CEO William Johnson that planned shutoffs may be a fact of life for a decade, until improvements to the grid can be completed, give rise to an unfamiliar uneasiness about living in the Golden State, especially in rural areas: If similar fire seasons and outages are the new normal, are California residents, government and services everyone depends on prepared to deal with it? 

“So does this whole scenario make California unlivable?” responds Rich Gordon with a laugh. President and CEO of the California Forestry Association, Gordon served 13 years on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and then in the State Assembly before taking his current job two years ago. “I think the history of California is that we’re folks who figure out how to adapt and keep going.”  

If forced power shutoffs continue to occur, the Menlo Park resident is confident that people will take steps such as creating community centers for emergencies.  To residents who didn’t realize they live in a high-risk fire zone, the recent experience is a “wake up call … to not only figure out how to deal with that problem but also figure out how to protect your home and provide the defensible space that you should around your home.”  

Volatility and innovation have always been a way of life in California, agrees State Assembly Speaker Pro tem Kevin Mullin, which makes for big challenges for public policymakers.  

“I will always be a believer in the California dream and our ability to respond to the challenges, but look, I’m the first to tell you that we’ve got serious work to do to make the state more livable and to deal with the affordability crisis,” he adds. “It’s real and we have to do more on affordable housing and making the state more livable and investing in transportation infrastructure …There is a long history of people writing California’s obituary, and they’ve always been proven wrong. So I will remain an optimist about our ability to respond to the many challenges we have in front of us.” 

Is California ’emptying out?’

There’s plenty of polling, anecdotal evidence, and stories like this one indicating that people are more anxious about remaining in the state that attracted its first population boom 170 years ago, on a dream that immigrants could sift a fortune right out of a river. Forty-seven percent of those polled by Edelman Intelligence in January 2018 said they were considering moving out of the state in the next five years, and the rate was higher among millennials (55 percent).  

A February 2018 report by the California Legislative Analyst drawn from federal American Community Survey data showed that between 2007 and 2016, on net, the state lost one million residents to other states, or about 2.5 percent of its population. But out-migration between 1990 and 2006 was “on average, more than double what it was in the most recent ten years.” Although more people in most demographic groups left California than moved in from 2007 to 2016, not surprisingly, the state “has gained among those with higher incomes ($110,000 per year or more) and higher levels of education (graduate degrees).”  

For definitive answers, people will have to wait until the 2020 Census figures become available in April 2021, but they’ll continue to have their opinions about whether the state is emptying out – and whether to join the exodus. 

“Everybody says they are leaving the state, but they’re not talking about the people who are coming in,” says Realtor Cliff Keith, a 44-year veteran of the business. “… We’re still selling houses. Houses are selling within three weeks.” The average sale price in Redwood City, he noted last month, was $1,809,000, and the last time one was listed for less than $1 million was Oct. 25. “It was one,” he adds.   

Emerald Hills resident Henrie Conway, 78, and her family hunkered down during 2 ½-day power outage in late October, using flashlights, plus the car battery as a cell phone charger. She “feels sorry for PG&E. We love our trees, and wires are going through those trees, and how could they possibly keep a spark from igniting in the state? I see them out trimming.”  Conway doesn’t know what the best solution is to fires and power outages in a state where population has grown and people have moved “into animal country. We’ve put ourselves in harm’s way.” 

Ironically, during the outage, she and her 10-year-old granddaughter read a novel set in the Gold Rush about a single mother of four living in Grass Valley when the whole town is wiped out, required reading at Amy’s school. “I’m just thankful to have a home that’s not burnt and lose everything,” Conway says. “I didn’t want to complain because they (PG&E) are trying to keep our house from being burned.”  

Her family has lived in Emerald Hills since 1973 but a more immediate pressure is economic. “We’re feeling the pinch,” says Conway, who worries they may have to leave the Bay Area. “What disturbs me is the fact that service people can’t afford to here, people who are being pushed out because they can’t afford to stay.” 

Likewise, her neighbor Elizabeth Yapp, a schoolteacher who has lived in her house 29 years, says if it weren’t for that, gentrification would force her out.  She too worries about service workers and young teachers being unable to get a foothold.  

Yapp vividly recalls being able to see from her house the flames that were devouring homes in the Oakland hills firestorm in 1991 and doesn’t have a problem with PG&E shutting off her power, “because that’s a small price to pay not to lose your house.” She hikes in nearby Edgewood Park and is glad to see how busy PG&E has been removing trees and other fuel and thinks the utility has been to a degree made a scapegoat. 

“I really feel like, yes they made mistakes,” she says. “But there’s a lot of people who have been quick to point the blame at PG&E. I think it’s really a more complicated problem.” 

Why we’re more vulnerable to wildfires

Three hundred plus years on, Sir Issac Newton’s singular insight that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction rings true. High Bay Area housing costs have sent commuters to distant, more affordable areas, which adds to traffic. Communities have sprung up in less expensive wildland areas, which had fires in the past – but they didn’t threaten whole subdivisions.  

California gave birth to the environmental movement, but the state today “has too much vegetation,” according to Gordon.  

“When John Muir arrived and looked at the Yosemite Valley, at that point California had about 40 trees to an acre,” he says, citing a 2018 Little Hoover Commission study. “Today we have 400 to 600 trees at least to an acre. And it’s just too much vegetation.” Native Americans used to burn forests out periodically to reduce undergrowth, to keep trees spaced apart, which helps to keep fire from spreading through the canopies. “In a thinner forest, fire stays on the ground. It doesn’t climb up to the canopy. It’s easier to fight and put out.” The U.S. Forest Service this year put the number of dead trees on federal, state and private land at more than 147 million. 

The state has experienced a multi-year drought, and Gordon is convinced that the climate has changed for hotter, dryer summers.

“Twenty-five percent of all Californians now live in an area that’s designated as high or very high fire risk, and that includes parts of Redwood City,” he notes. “Emerald Hills is included on that map. So we’ve got climate conditions which make it right for a fire, we’ve got too much vegetation, which makes it right for a fire, and we’ve got infrastructure in the utility lines that has not been maintained or upgraded. And not all of our fires are started by utilities. But it is a source of major fires that we’ve certainly experienced.” 

Communities are not defenseless

The Woodside Fire Protection District, which serves Woodside, Portola Valley and some other rural areas including Emerald Hills, has had a proactive “chipper” program for more than a decade to help residents of Woodside and Portola Valley clear around their homes. Between May and November, they can leave brush, branches and tree limbs at curbside to be picked up at no charge. 

Fire Marshal Denise Enea says her department also removes “target hazards,” especially trees with a potential to start fires. They may be in compliance with PG&E’s distance parameters but still overhang power lines. “Removing the ignition sources,” she points out, “that’s prevention in a nutshell. People have to remember that. Let’s just try not to have the ignitions start in the first place.” 

The multi-agency organization FIRE Safe San Mateo County focuses on the urban/wildland interface. The groups works collaboratively to assist each other, such as in seeking grants like the $100,000 in Measure K funding that the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors set aside to extend the chipper program to high-risk areas like Emerald Hills, Enea says. Work is also being done to map vegetation and to get better at predicting wind patterns.  

The fire season just ended, Enea notes, and the fire protection district came through “pretty much unscathed this year. I think a lot of it has to do with how much work we’re doing, how much our residents are doing.” 

PG&E’s rolling blackouts that began Oct. 25 eventually affected communities along both sides of the Skyline, as well as parts of Redwood City and San Carlos. The outage also took down telephone and television service for many as well, leaving people without a way to receive emergency alerts and updates.  More than 11 percent of cellphone towers in the county failed to work, according to Federal Trade Commission reports.  

Providers have come under criticism for not having resilient battery or generator power.  Assemblyman Mullin and State Senator Jerry Hill, both Democrats, say legislation will be introduced to require cellphone companies to have longer-lasting back-up power systems. “We’re going to be requiring them to have a sustainable system that will last 72 hours, maybe more,” Sen. Hill says. 

During the late October outage, Portola Valley Town Hall opened, as did a firehouse in Woodside, where kids could get internet access to do their homework. Residents could even take a shower. Fire Chief Rob Lindner says people in the wooded communities are used to power outages and are pretty well prepared. Many already have generators.  

Concerns remain

San Carlos received input from community members at Nov. 13 meeting about how to prepare for a future of power outages. Several expressed concern about making sure that the vulnerable elderly and people with medical problems were taken care of.  

Some small businesses in the outage areas experienced losses. 

Amit Sharma, who has owned Bonfare Market at Canyon at Oak Knoll Roads in Redwood City for three years, had to throw out big crates of dairy goods, plus sandwiches, milk and cheese. “We lost three days of business and close to $10, $11 grand for two days,” he says. With the lost product, the total was  “close to $20 grand altogether. … For a small business, it’s really hard to take a big hit like that and recover.” 

On the other hand, Khoa Pham, owner of Single Cylinder Repair in San Carlos, experienced three or four days of “frenzy” as customers desperate for back-up power came to buy a generator. Pham carries several models of Honda generators ranging in price from $900 to about $4,600. “There were people who drove hours to get a generator,” says Pham, who sold about 50 machines in October — and ran out. 

Generators and even the increasingly popular solar panels can have “issues” too. The California Air Resources Board issued a Nov. 7 news release noting that gas and diesel generators can emit a lot of pollutants and provided an online tool (ww2.arb.ca.gov) to help consumers compare.  

Being without electricity at her Emerald Hills home was like “a huge step back in time,” says Realtor Vicki Constantini. “No TV, no wi-fi, no nothing.” She took laundry to her mother-in-law’s house, but then she and husband Oscar decided to buy a generator. “At first you’re so thrilled,” she says, “but the generator noise drove me nuts.” 

Plenty of blame to go around

The fires and utility-related problems are huge, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates PG&E and other utilities, has been faulted for failing to foresee the risk of fire and forcing them to prepare. Critics say the PUC has not devoted adequate staffing and resources to inspection and monitoring utilities.  

“The PUC and the regulators allowed PG&E to keep working, keep going along and not modernize their facilities, not modernize their grid,” says Tom McCune, a recently appointed member of the Belmont City Council who was vice president of facilities for the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1990s. “So I think they’re both responsible for this. PG&E should have said long ago, ‘Hey there are parts of our grid that were built in the 1920s and it’s not safe and we need to upgrade it.’ And the PUC should have said, ‘Yes, you’re right. We’ll allow some kind of surcharge or something.’ There’s got to be a way to pay for it.” 

Hill has been a particularly vocal critic of PG&E, based on staff investigations, public record requests, hearings, audits and whistleblower reports, but characterizes the relationship with the PUC as for too long “cozy” and “corrupt.”  In the past, he says, appointments to the PUC have been political plums, but Hill thinks more recent ones are a step in the right direction. Created in the state Constitution over 100 years ago, the PUC’s broad responsibility and cumbersome processes also need to be reformed so action can be timely and effective, according to Hill, which may require state legislation.  

He came to his unfavorable view of PG&E as an outgrowth of the San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010, and says the same underlying problems with old infrastructure, inadequate maintenance, lack of investment and inspections apply to the Camp Fire of 2018. “So we have the exact same circumstance 10 years later on a different part of their business.” 

Hill does, however, feel corrective work over the past decade on the gas system has been successful, including requirements to test – and document the tests of gas lines, or if necessary, replace them.  PG&E also built “a phenomenal a training center in Winters” for all new employees, where a section of the exploded San Bruno pipe is displayed. 

“Their system is much better—but it was forced on them and that’s what will have to happen, I believe, with the electric system,” the senator says. 

“Look this is decades of neglect and decades of the CPUC looking the other way,” Assemblyman Mullin says. “We’re now dealing with the fallout of all that incompetence and intransigence with a backdrop of increased risk and challenge due to climate change. So this is very much an incredibly messy situation that will probably end up dominating and defining Governor Newsom’s first term as governor and will probably dominate the remainder of my tenure in the Assembly.” 

PG&E sought bankruptcy protection last January, citing more than $30 billion in potential fire-related liability costs. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s views of the settlement for fire victims and restructuring will be critical as PG&E strives to meet a June 30 deadline to exit from bankruptcy and participate in a California wildfire fund. In December, the governor rejected a $13.5 billion settlement PG&E had worked out, largely because he didn’t think the plan will achieve the goal of providing safe and reliable power to customers.   

A federal bankruptcy judge early this year is expected to consider competing reorganization plans, one from shareholders and one from bondholders. Meanwhile, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo has also been picking up supporters for a plan to turn PG&E into a customer-owned cooperative.  

10 yrs of planned shutoffs ‘completely unacceptable’

Whatever the outcome, both Mullin and Hill dismiss the prospect of 10 years of intentional power shutoffs as completely unacceptable.  

“They need to harden their system as San Diego Electric & Power did after their terrible fires in 2007,” Sen. Hill says. “They now use steel poles. No wooden poles to fall.” Wires are insulated so they won’t short out if a branch falls on top, and refined weather mapping and cameras help spot fires before they get out of hand. “We will all pay for that (investment),” he continues, “but it will make it a better, safer infrastructure that will prevent the need for a power shutoff.” 

Companies large and small are affected. “We’ve got a first-rate economy,” Sen. Hill says, “and we’re a first-world country with a third world utility. And you can’t sustain business with that. My sense is that we will see much more limited power shutoffs in the future. And they will be much more strategically and surgically implemented.”  

Mullin also plans to introduce legislation to place a $9 million to $12 million “resiliency” bond issue on the November ballot, which would include money for fire prevention and safety, as well sea level rise, flood control, clean beaches, safe drinking water, recycling and other items.  

Belmont’s McCune has suggested that a structure like TVA’s, which is a federally owned company, might be a solution for PG&E, which he doesn’t think has the resources to fix the grid. But the problem can’t just be allowed to fester, he says. Long-range facility planners for corporations must now add to the mix—after earthquakes and the ever-increasing cost of doing business in the Bay Area—the risk of wildfires and possible power shutdowns.  

Companies may keep some facilities on the Peninsula, Councilman McCune says, “but they don’t need to be headquartered here. And they don’t need to have their data centers here. They’re not going to totally pack up and leave, but they’ll move major functions out of this area. … I agree we need this fixed, just for the right thing to do kind of reasons, but we need to get it fixed for economic reasons.” 

About that ‘leaving the Bay Area’ dilemma 

Tim Harrison had to cancel a 49er alumni party at his Canyon Inn restaurant because of the October shutdown and also throw out a lot of perishables. “It seems like after 47 years (in business), you might want to be able to relax,” he laments. “It’s still very hard to carry on a small independent business.”  

When the restaurant opened, his monthly PG&E bill ran about $250. Now it’s $3,000. Water and garbage were about $100. Now they’re $1,100 to $1,200 a month. “Everything is about 10 times what it was.” 

So is the owner of the landmark eatery ready to join the rush out of California?  

He doesn’t hesitate in answering. “Where would I go? We’re digging in.” When he feels a little down, Harrison goes to work, because his employees and is customers cheer him up. “We’re in the community,” he says, “and I’m not leaving.” 

 This story was originally published in the January print edition of Climate Magazine.