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An urgency ordinance passed by the Redwood City Council Monday aims to protect renters from evictions in the wake of state rent cap legislation that doesn’t go into effect until Jan. 1.

The ordinance restricts landlords from increasing rents by more than 9 percent, or 5 percent plus the Consumer Price Index, until State Assembly Bill 1482 goes into effect. It also prohibits owners from terminating a tenancy without just cause if the tenant has lived in a unit for 12 months or more.

AB 1482, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Oct. 8, sets a limit on annual rent increases statewide to 5 percent plus cost of living inflation, or 10 percent, whichever is lower. When it takes effect in January, the bill will also prohibit evictions without just cause. If rents were increased after March 15, the rent on Jan. 1 is reduced to the rent as of March 15, plus the maximum increase allowed by AB 1482.

Under the state law, single family homes or condominiums where the owner is not a real estate investment trust, corporation or limited liability where at least one member is a corporation, are exempted from the law, along with duplexes where the owner occupies one of the units.

While the new law is facing legal challenges, Redwood City Council became the first San Mateo County city to pass an emergency ordinance, citing concerns that “bad actor” landlords aim to evict tenants prior to the state law’s effective date on Jan. 1.

“The goal of the urgency ordinance is to keep tenants in their homes, and to reduce the impacts of displacement in our community,” the city stated. “The City Council saw an urgent need to protect renters due to a rise in tenant complaints about rent hikes and evictions.”

Whether or not they believe in rent control policies, Council members expressed the need for an urgency ordinance to ensure renters are not targeted for eviction by landlords.

“I’m opposed to rent control,” Councilmember Shelly Masur said. “However, with the actions that have been taken since the passage of AB 1482, I don’t see any option other than to act with urgency.”

Councilmember Giselle Hale called the pace at which the urgency ordinance came together “unprecedented in the government space.”

“The state did not prepare for this,” she said. “And cities are left to repair the job. But despite its shortcomings, we have to act.”

Councilmember Diane Howard said she felt the state law’s rent cap is reasonable and fair and that Gov. Newsom’s “intent is good.”

“He’s trying to help people stay in their homes,” she said.

The city is providing outreach to tenants, informing them of their rights under the new laws and providing legal resources here.

With the expectation of planned PG&E power shutoffs continuing “for years,” Peninsula Clean Energy on Monday announced a commitment of $10 million over three years to fund clean backup power for its medically vulnerable residents and for essential community services during shutoff events.

The Peninsula Clean Energy Board of Directors voted to commit the investment as an early response to a problem that has impacted nearly 60,000 of the 290,000 homes, businesses and community facilities using its electricity, including vulnerable residents who rely on electricity to power life-saving devices such as ventilators.

“In just two weeks, PG&E has already turned the lights out on portions of San Mateo County three times,” said Jan Pepper, CEO of Peninsula Clean Energy. “The planned outages by PG&E are expected to continue for years. We are acting now to develop emergency power solutions for those customers who are most at risk.”

The $10 million investment will be used to “develop programs to support the installation of battery backup systems powered by renewable energy on eligible homes and community facilities with greatest need,” according to Peninsula Clean Energy.

The effort is expected to be supplemented by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently announced statewide funding for emergency power backup systems.

Viewed the normal way, Lathrop House is the hometown Mount Vernon, the residence of San Mateo County’s first assessor-clerk-recorder, Benjamin Lathrop. Stately and ornate, this Steamboat Gothic-style mansion today commands a can’t-miss-it location in downtown Redwood City following a May move to a spot behind the county history museum. Once exhibits are created and furniture gets moved back in, Lathrop House will put out the welcome mat again for visitors.

But viewed the paranormal way? Could it be that there’s more than meets the eye to this house with many gables, this landmark that has been uprooted from its final resting place and relocated three times? If those walls could talk, would they be telling ghost stories?

To those who have done paranormal “investigations” at Lathrop House, the idea that it’s animated by departed spirits is not at all farfetched.

“There’s a lot of places that are haunted that stay very quiet for decades,” says Jim Martin of Redwood City, who has been doing after-dark investigations at Lathrop House for several years. Then someone decides to renovate, he continues, and “all of a sudden, things start happening because somebody has come in and upset what they still consider their home, their place. … I’d really be interested in getting back into Lathrop pretty soon now that they’ve moved it because that’s going to be a really interesting investigation to find out what effect this has had on that location.”

Julie Eckert of San Mateo, who has had psychic abilities and experiences all her life, visits Lathrop House one or two times a month and got recordings of spirit voices from under the house during the recent move. “My favorite place seems to be Lathrop House,” she says. “I don’t know why. … But I feel attached to the spirits there. I feel that they’re attached to me.”

The two friends are among a small community of people who are involved in paranormal exploration, often independent of others and with differing goals. Martin, 57, who has been involved in various businesses over the years, got into the field after watching the “Ghost Adventures” program on the Travel Channel about eight years ago and became increasingly fascinated. Through a “meet-up” up group in San Jose, he was able to participate in his first investigation.

He began to buy his own cameras and recording, lighting, and other ghost-documenting equipment and learned the computer skills to do editing.  Martin “bit the bullet” and bought broadcast-level cameras and ended up launching his own livestreaming network, the Spirit Realm Network (www.thespiritrealm.net), which is “basically anything paranormal, metaphysical or esoteric, being that big umbrella. … I’m really just a reporter. I just want to be there with my camera and my microphone and hear what has to be said. What’s going on? What do these entities want us to know? Why are they still hanging around?” The network, which is free to viewers but has advertisers and sponsors, has live programming every night. Followers are from around the world, especially from the Midwest and Canada.

Eckert, 59, a flight attendant, was brought up Catholic and “my entire life I was raised to believe this (the paranormal) exists.” Unlike Martin, when spirits are present, she gets strong indications — where energy is in the room or a feeling of air caught in her throat. “Everything starts to open up and amplify for me” right before a planned investigation, Eckert says.

It was Martin who first approached Helen Cocco, the president of the Redwood City Heritage Association, which operates Lathrop House as a museum; about being allowed to do investigations. Cocco, 88, was hesitant at first and told him it needed to be limited in size and kept private. “I didn’t want anybody off the street,” she says. Cocco charges $250 for a group or $50 per person, which goes to support operations.  She plans to continue to welcome legitimate, knowledgeable investigators after the museum reopens.

The groups, usually five or six people, arrive at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m.  and stay until about 10 p.m. Cocco makes coffee and dessert and sits in the kitchen with a friend and “chitchats.” Meanwhile, the investigators go through the house to see if they feel “energy.” They use their equipment and recorders to pick up messages from the beyond. Often not much happens. If the investigators get a response, they ask the entity questions such as its name and whether it lives in the house or is just visiting.

There are two kinds of hauntings, in the ghost-hunting world: residual and intelligent. Residual energy is a “playback of past events,” according to Melissa Martin Ellis’s “The Everything Ghost Hunting Book,” such as apparitions that appear repeatedly. Intelligent hauntings, on the other hand, are ghosts who “have not crossed over,” linger for various reasons and may interact.

Intelligent hauntings are obviously more engaging. Both Martin and Eckert say the most common replies they pick up from the other world are “get out” and a profane “f— you.”

One theory, Martin explains, is that “They see the house and they see us as ghosts … like we’re invading their space just as they come in and invade our space. A lot of times, they don’t know they’ve passed on. They’re clinging to this place and it’s like, ‘Why are these people in my house?’”

There’s nothing as convincing as recorded “proof,” but to the uninitiated, the wispy images on video are nothing like encountering an actual Caspar. Similarly, listening to a recording of an “electronic voice phenomenon,” or EVP, can be like straining for ocean sounds by putting a seashell to one’s ear.

“They’re never going to come up to you and appear like we appear,” says Martin, who has a video of a “little creature” he photographed at Lathrop House. “ …. They don’t look like real people. They look like energy in the form of a mist.” Investigators have repeatedly seen “shadow play” on the Lathrop House stairway and heard footsteps, Eckert says.

Cocco, who is a Catholic, hasn’t heard voices or seen spirits during the investigations, but one night she was sitting with a group of about a dozen investigators when “all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the table where I was sitting beside moved. It made like a half-turn. … It definitely moved, absolutely.”

Nevertheless, she remains a skeptic. “While I am not a total believer, I had some second thoughts,” she says. “I’m in the middle of the road. I’m not a total believer — but I’ve seen this happen.”

Both Martin and Eckert say they’ve seen paranormal manifestations that were startling, as well as some that were more unsettling.

“I’ve been grabbed on my arm where I felt fingers digging in with two other people standing right near me,” says Eckert. “And that freaked me out. It was one of my first experiences and I almost quit investigating after that. … Then I realized it was probably just a grumpy spirit that just was trying to freak me out knowing he could.”

Years ago, while cleaning up after-hours at a café at the Half Moon Bay Airport, Martin says he saw a ramekin spiral two feet in the air and land about 10 feet away. “It didn’t scare the crap out of me for some reason.”  Later, though, he did an investigation at an old inn in the Midwest which had been built on sacred Indian land. All of a sudden, a girl next to him cried out as three little plumes appeared on her arm, swelling up like a tribal brand. “That was the worst I’ve ever seen,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of scratches, most on people’s backs.”

That is one reason why investigations should be done in pairs, Martin says. Visiting rundown, abandoned locations alone is inherently riskier, but “some of this can actually turn demonic,” he adds. “And people get sort of possessed. It’s not the safest thing for a single person.”

So are investigators playing with fire?

Martin, who attends a Christian church in Redwood City, says that’s a common question and one he has wrestled with. He believes he has not been attacked because he is protected by his faith, and communicating with spirits reinforces his belief that they must be speaking from a kind of purgatory. “It’s more reaffirmed my belief,” he says. “It hasn’t taken me away from anything. If anything, it has added to it.”

People nowadays generally aren’t skeptical about supernatural phenomenon the way they once were, according to Martin and Eckert.  “It’s just a matter of I guess whether you’ve had an experience or not,” she says. “I think the people who haven’t had one say it’s not true.” Clearly not in that category, she finds investigations “the most fascinating thing in the world, to be able to have someone talk to you who you can’t see. To me, it’s one of the most exciting things out there that proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that that does exist and that these people do exist. And I’m just curious to see what evidence you can get (on her recordings.)”

Perhaps surprisingly, Redwood City’s Civil War-era Union Cemetery isn’t the happy haunting ground one might assume it would be. “Reports of haunted cemeteries are much less common than those of specter-plagued houses,” according to author Ellis.

Ellen Crawford, president of the Historic Union Cemetery Association, has ushered a half dozen investigation groups through the cemetery on Woodside Road over the years. Nobody she has observed has seemed to find much. One group brought a box that “just sort of spewed out words,” one of which was allegedly “teacher.”  Crawford took them to the grave of James Van Court, a music teacher and photographer. “They felt something warm on the ground,” she says.  She didn’t.

Nonetheless, Crawford doesn’t disparage their efforts, figuring that if the spirits at Union Cemetery are conscious and communicating, “They are happy to have us here … I have a warm, fuzzy feeling for these people.”

Union Cemetery volunteers plan a Halloween-themed tour of the cemetery, tentatively scheduled for 10 a.m. Oct. 26. “We don’t do spooky stuff,” Crawford says. “We do gruesome stuff,” which means a blood-and-guts recounting of some of the gorier Union Cemetery deaths that made the pages of early-day Redwood City newspapers. For information, go to historicunioncemetery.com.

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

A public power shutoff expected to begin Saturday due to weather conditions posing high fire risk has been extended to additional, more populated areas of San Mateo County.

PG&E says it may turn off power to about 190,000 customers across San Mateo County customers beginning at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturday due to high wind and fire danger, according to the county. About 1,293 medical baseline customers could be impacted and 348 addresses identified as critical infrastructure.

The Public Safety Power Shutoff is expected to last 48 hours, until 2 p.m. Monday, but it may take longer for some customers to be restored.

Maps by PG&E of potential impacted areas show vastly wider areas of the county potentially affected by the third Public Safety Power Shutoff event than the previous two.

PG&E will attempt to contact customers that will be impacted via telephone, text and email.

To look up whether your address could be impacted, go here.

Radio has been a part of American entertainment since the 1920s, when families gathered in the living room around a giant Philco. By the 1950s, the disc jockey and rock & roll had claimed the airwaves. From the Big Bopper to Dick Clark and Wolfman Jack, the DJ has been an integral part of radio. However, a career in this business is ever changing and challenging.

So, who are these ever-cheerful voices who keep commuters awake, informed and entertained with traffic reports, news, commentary, comedy and music? Climate got a chance to visit the studio of 107.7 the Bone and talk with the crew of the morning “Lamont & Tonelli Show.” Their stories are a tribute to talent, perseverance and, in no small way, serendipity.

Cumulus Media owns 505 radio stations throughout the U.S., including San Francisco favorites  KNBR, KSFO, KGO and for rock & roll fans, 107.7 the Bone. Visitors to the studio might be surprised to find that all of these stations are neighbors—separated by soundproof walls, with  107.7 the Bone’s home at the end of a long hall. A huge computer console that would do the Starship Enterprise proud sits like an island in the middle of the room. Large microphones accordion down from both sides. Two are used by Lamont and Tonelli when on the air, while co-host Chasta resides in a separate sound booth behind a window.

Each morning, bright and early, they combine music with traffic reports, off-color humor, prank calls and commentary. And the largest audience in the Bay Area has been eating it up for 30 years.

Lamont Hollywood and Paul Tonelli (one of two Redwood City residents who are on the air) have some pretty interesting stories on how they ended up talking for a living. The following is the Cliff Notes version:

Born and raised in San Bruno, Tonelli had plans to go pharmacy school.  While in Winnipeg, Canada, Lamont was preparing to enter the Royal Canadian Police Academy. Radio changed both those destinations.

About halfway though school in Idaho, Tonelli got his start in radio because some guy at a poker game announced he was giving up his graveyard shifts at the local Country & Western station and wanted to know if anyone wanted the gig.

“It just kind of fell into my lap playing cards, drinking a few beers,” Tonelli said. “I was always interested in radio, so I went in and applied.”

Around the same time, while waiting to enter the police academy, Lamont was offered a good job as a DJ in his home town of Winnipeg. He’d already logged considerable DJ time at a station in Manitoba. “I decided radio was better than getting shot at so I went for it. Could have stayed there for the rest of my life, but if I did that I was never going to make any money and it was boring as hell,” he said.

Tonelli came home to finish his education at San Francisco City College, studying  broadcasting. After an internship and a failed attempt as a UPS driver (he clipped a car on his test drive), he got a call from Gill Haar at KYUU who gave him a lead on a position as a traffic reporter. Before long Tonelli was back in radio and on his way.

Meanwhile, in Winnipeg, Lamont was sending out tapes, seeking a change of scenery and a new challenge. KSJO in San Jose got one of those tapes and liked it. They flew the chatty Canuck in to see if he would be a good fit for a new morning show they were developing. It was 1989 when Lamont was put together with a young traffic reporter as an on-air partner. The two hit it off.

“I thought, yeah, I can get along with this guy. He’s a good dude,” recalls Lamont. And so the “Lamont and Tonelli Show” was born and quickly rose to become the number one show in the area.

In 2002 KSJO hired a new station manager; a shrewd negotiator with an eye to improving the bottom line. He waited until the last minute, late December, before offering Lamont and Tonelli a contract which nearly halved their salaries, saying, “Take it or leave it.”

They left it.

By January 2003 they were at the helm of 107.7 the Bone.

The career path of Chasta Freeman Michaelis could fall under the heading of divine intervention. The almighty clearly intended this woman’s voice to entertain the masses. It started 17 years ago when Chasta, while still in college in Oklahoma, called the largest rock station in Oklahoma City hoping to score free tickets to an Aerosmith concert. Her pitch was so good that the DJ offered her an internship.

“He thought I was funny, I made him laugh,” she recalls, “and right then and there over the phone he offered me an internship.”

Chasta spent nine months interning until one fateful day when the mid-afternoon DJ didn’t show up for work due to a minor car accident. “Come with me,” her boss announced, and on the way to the studio added, “Say something.” Chasta started to read from some papers in her hand when he cut in: “That will work.”

“The next thing I know I am sitting in front of the mic and he is showing me how to start and stop the music. Then he says ‘Go for it,’ turns around and walks out.” Suddenly Chasta found herself sitting in front of a microphone at the largest rock & roll station in Oklahoma.

“Understand that everyone I have ever known listens to this station and it’s the middle of the weekday,” she said. “I puke in the trashcan, come out of a Pink Floyd song and that was that.” She was hired right away to take over the late-night slot, then a Sunday morning gig, followed by her own weekend show. Then came an opening to co-host the weekday morning show—a meteoric rise by radio standards.

But Chasta’s real dream was to become an actress. So, one day she packed up and moved to Los Angeles, leaving radio behind. She worked as an assistant for actor Sean Astin for over a year when fate stepped in again. One of the program directors from the Oklahoma station became the head of CNN Radio Los Angeles. He offered her a job as a traffic and weather reporter for multiple stations, convincing her that radio was her true calling. Before she knew it Chasta once again was sitting before a microphone talking to thousands of listeners.

Then she and her husband relocated to the Bay Area in 2012, where Chasta quickly found a home on the Lamont & Tonelli show as the traffic reporter.

“Now and again I would chime in, and seven years later, here I am a full-blown co-host to the morning show with my own daily radio show on top of it.”

Natural talent for sure, but call it what it is: Divine intervention.

Then there is Baby Huey, aka Danny Delmore, who produces the Lamont & Tonelli morning show and is a fill-in DJ. At 6’4” and weighing in at 300 pounds, Baby Huey lives up to his comic book namesake—a handle he received from his aunt as a boy. A big boy.

Baby Huey is a local from Alameda and grew up with a radio glued to his ear.

“Radio became the foundation for who I am as a person,” he said. “It had a huge impact on my life—it was my gateway to new music.”

A mass communications major at Cal, he built up his on-air and production experience at the school radio station CALX, working every shift available to build up his rèsumé. He applied for an internship at 107.7 the Bone while still at Cal. The station manager saw the passion the big guy wore on his XXL sleeve. Baby Huey was in — and has been working at the station full time since graduating.

“We have a small staff. Today to make it in radio you have to wear multiple hats,” he said, “On-air is only one component. Sound editing, web, social media, podcasts all to help contribute to the overall product that is 107.7 the Bone.”

Baby Huey arrives at the studio at 5:15 a.m., does his regular duties for Lamont & Tonelli, pre-records the Metallica feature for nighttime broadcast, and carries several weekend shifts each month. An unrelenting schedule with an eye on the day when he has his own show.

The path of the newest member of the Bone ensemble, Redwood City native Joe “Joehawk” Ceccotti, mirrors Baby Huey’s. Except he had no interest in radio until halfway through his college years at San Jose State University. “I was a mechanical engineering major,” he says, “which was a terrible idea.”

One day one of his fraternity brothers showed him a flyer from KSJS, the university radio station, which was looking for DJs.  Alternative rock was one of the categories, right up Ceccotti’s musical alley. He got the job and changed his major to broadcast communications.

“I fell in love with it right away,” he recalls. “Being behind a microphone allows me to let my personality out and have fun with it.” And so “Joehawk” was born, a moniker bestowed due to his mohawk haircut.

After graduating Joehawk began to intern at several stations, finally landing at the Bone where he acted as engineer for the 49er games and occasionally filled in for the traffic report.

After three years of interning and only part-time work to show for it, Joehawk became disillusioned. “I was never at the studio,” he said, “just a board operator and only knew the people within our station. I had been on air only once doing traffic and was really about to hang it up.”

Joehawk confided his feelings to Chasta, who marched into the office of program director Dominic “Zakk” Zaccagnini, the boss, but also one of the afternoon DJs. She informed him that if he didn’t hire Ceccotti, they were going to lose a real talent. Zakk called Joehawk into his office.

“He told me he was all about helping talent progress,” said Ceccotti, “so ‘How about we make you the new on-air fill in’?” Joehawk was back in the saddle, in front of the microphone when regular DJs were off. Still, radio work doesn’t pay the bills, so his time is split working at Devils Canyon Brewery in San Carlos.

Asked what it takes to be successful in the demanding business of radio, Lamont and Tonelli have this to offer:

“Work harder than anyone else, be yourself, be original and surround yourself with great people,” Lamont said, “and, yeah, luck plays into it.”

“You can learn a lot of the mechanics of running a show, but you have to be well rounded,” Tonelli adds. “Know what’s going on in the world, your community, current events, while adding original content.”

Bet on it that a couple of up-and-coming DJs named Joehawk and Baby Huey are taking notes.

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

Pavement resurfacing on parts of Whipple Avenue and Veterans Boulevard, near the overpass, is set to begin Sunday, Oct. 27, and run through Friday, Nov. 15.

The majority of the work will be done during the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.

G Bortolotto & Company, Inc. will work to resurface the roadway, add pavement markings and striping and create enhanced bike facilities on the overcrossing, among other activities, according to the city. For more information on the project, go here.

Photo credit: City of Redwood City