MicroClimate

The Sequoia High School girls basketball team is still savoring the satisfaction of what is being hailed on campus as the first Central Coast Section championship won by a Cherokee girls team in any sport.

With three freshmen in the starting five last year, the team won 20 games and made it to the CCS semifinals. This year’s 25-5 squad knocked off top-seeded Palo Alto for the CCS Division 1 (large school) title, then lost in the first round of the state tournament to Cosumnes Oaks in Elk Grove on Feb. 26.

“We turned things around last year, took it to the next level this year, and it’s nice we’ll have most of them back next year,” head coach Steve Picchi said. “They’re all great kids.”

Their secret of success? “Good mix of skills and great team chemistry,” Picchi said. “We were hard to scout because of our balance.” The only starting senior, Soana Afu, was the team’s leading scorer and was named to the all-league team.

Picchi has coached the team for 12 years with Mike Ciardella, his Peninsula youth basketball coaching partner for 42 years.

Jacqueline Kurland, one of the three starting sophomores this year, put it this way in a report in the school newspaper Raven Report: “We all love each other a lot, and it’s sad that our season is over. We had a great season, and we are proud of what we accomplished.”

The team: Seniors: Soana Afu, Pafuti Lealamanua, Danielle Huber. Juniors: Sharon Sandoval Rodriguez, Maya Hirano, Sarah Bobich, Jessica Martin, Talita Falepapalangi. Sophomores: Jacqueline Kurland, Caitlin Dulsky, Alexis Jackson. Freshmen: Mary Jane Hartman, Violet Buruaivalu. Manager: Ella Blaney.

A program to install rotating, temporary art in the kiosks at Courthouse Square has brought an intriguing new work that looks like outsized paper DNA molecules wrapped around towering, teetering books.  Called “Incubator,” the installation by artist Kate Dodd was inspired by her multiple trips to the Redwood City Library and is comprised of 2,000 volumes, about 1,500 of which form the towers. The several hundred books on the floor, which are about women or by women authors, created the “foundation” for the book towers. Dodd says books by women authors such as Laura Ingalls Wilder had a big impact on her growing up. She hand-cut a paper network of words and images from books to connect the towers. “Incubator” is on exhibit through April 6 courtesy of Redwood City Downtown Improvement Association funding and with support from the library and the Friends of the Library.

The Redwood City Library Foundation will be presenting STEAM ON THE SQUARE, the largest one-day outdoor STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) event in the Bay Area Saturday, April 27. It will be the fourth annual event and has grown to include more than 80 exhibits, plus experiments, speakers, and demonstrations – the object being to spark kids’ imaginations and help them pursue a career in STEAM disciplines. Hours of the free event are 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Entertainment will be provided all day and the San Mateo County History Museum will offer hands-on activities for Maritime Day, which is the same day.

Team photo: Back Row – left to right: Steve Picchi, Soana Afu, Pafuti Lealamanua, Jessica Martin, Talita Falepapalangi, Mike Ciardella.    Middle row – left to right: Alexis Jackson, Mary Jane Hartman, Ella Blaney, Sarah Bobich, Caitlin Dulsky.   Front Row – left to right: Jacqueline Kurland, Maya Hirano, Sharon Sandoval Rodriguez, Danielle Huber.

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

A few columns ago, I pondered whether, and how much, San Mateo County will assert itself as the region begins to work more regionally. This is a problem because the region – which mostly means San Jose and San Francisco – sees San Mateo County as fat, happy and selfish. We’re also good looking, but that doesn’t seem to matter as much.

The region tends to think we’re a pass-through county – somewhere you have to drive through while you’re on your way to important places. Or that we’re an obstacle – in the way of the really important things necessary to cater to that never-ending hunger in San Francisco and San Jose to be even more really important.

Anyway, the question of county assertiveness took living form very quickly, and it’s roiling the usually calm waters of an upcoming vote on Friday night among all the county’s cities concerning whether Redwood City Councilwoman Alicia Aguirre will retain a seat on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission or be deposed by Millbrae Councilwoman Gina Papan.

There are any number of pressing regional issues, but the most immediate is an attempt to set regional requirements by which cities must build additional housing.

When the regionnaires say they think the whole region should build more housing, they mean us, because they think we haven’t done our fair share and we’ve been content to watch our housing values soar while opposing construction that will urbanize the county (see: fat, happy and selfish). That’s not correct, but as my biggest fans on social media like to say about me: Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

THE SPAWN OF MTC: The regional housing hoo-ha was spawned by the MTC, which ate the Association of Bay Area Governments for breakfast a while ago. The argument there is that the state goals for building housing have been widely and routinely ignored.

That’s true, but it’s been a good example of regional co-conspiracy. The Bay Area communities have not built enough housing almost everywhere and San Mateo County, despite the stereotype, has done its share.

There was a revealing chart in a Sunday story in the San Francisco Chronicle about Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposal to force cities to build more housing by holding hostage their gas tax revenues. Certainly, adding a new problem in the form of broken-down roadways is an excellent way to get people to solve a largely unrelated problem. Maybe the governor should think about restoring city redevelopment authority, since that’s the way many cities were building new housing.

Anyway, the chart showed how far each Bay Area County has gone to meet its 2023 goal for more housing. The region is 36 percent of the way there; San Mateo County is 34 percent, which means we’re below average and we probably won’t get into our first choice for college. There’s an even better statistic from the countywide Home For All task Force: Five years ago, the ratio of new jobs to new housing in San Mateo County was 24:1. Now it’s 12:1 and we can credit H4A, which has been working on this for a couple of years, perhaps to the surprise of the region.

POOLING CARPOOL FUNDS: The other regional flap concerns the new carpool lane to be built on Highway 101 and, more specifically, who will own the lane, who will operate it and who gets to keep the money from it. I think it should be me, but that’s only because I want to put a third story on my house so I can be even fatter, happier and more selfish.

Two county entities – the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, which is putting up big bucks for the project, and the Cities/County Association of Governments – can’t decide between them whether the TA should own the carpool lane, own and operate it through a regional MTC-controlled thing, or own it and have it operated by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, which already owns and operates carpool lanes down there.

If the TA owns the lane, it keeps the money, which struck me as a good idea, even when I worked at the TA. And VTA has a sterling record of managing their managed lanes. There is some considerable apprehension that taking ownership and partnering with VTA means the county will own all the things that could go wrong. Things always go wrong. You can spend a lot of time worrying about what might happen. Or you can spend your time making things happen.

The housing and carpool issues are more complicated than they appear, but at the heart of each is the question of San Mateo County’s assertiveness, which brings us to the vote on Friday night at a meeting of the San Mateo County Council of Cities. This august body is made up of a representative from each city, and as the City Selection Committee, picks the city council members who serve on regional boards, including SamTrans, the TA and MTC.

Aguirre has been the cities’ representative since 2013 and she is seeking reappointment.

The contest comes down to this succinct summary: her critics think Aguirre isn’t aggressive enough; her critics think Papan is too aggressive.

Aguirre also has been criticized for not communicating enough, but the essence of Papan’s challenge is that Aguirre “has been lacking in representation.”

Aguirre says she has communicated extensively and that she has delivered where it matters most, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars to San Mateo County transit and transportation agencies. MTC is the region’s transportation money fountain and the main job of the commissioners is to drink deeply. We need to bring a big straw. Paper, of course, not plastic.

Contact Mark Simon at mark.simon24@yahoo.com.