San Bruno CA: State of the City Part 2 of 2

The San Bruno Chamber of Commerce included Mayor Jim Ruane’s State of the City address

Part 2 of 2 – State of the City – Part 1 at

http://patch.com/california/sanbruno/san-bruno-ca-state-city-address-part-1-2-parts

Over the last 6 months, City staff has been busy working with our contractor to replace each of our community’s approximately 11,000 residential water meters. The City’s residential meter system was installed over twenty years ago. With about 8,500 meters replaced to date, the Advanced Water Meter Project has already improved our ability to track water usage and assist in identifying potential water leaks and other system problems. The new system will improve efficiency and accuracy of the water meter reading process by fully automating it and allowing remote monitoring and tracking of water usage by individual customers and the City through the internet. Where residents now receive their water bill and usage information every 60 days, internet access will allow individual customers to see their water use at any time directly from their computer. The City expects that more accurate and timely water use monitoring will improve water conservation efforts by identifying usage patterns and identifying abnormalities in real time.

Speaking of water conservation, we can all be proud of San Bruno’s performance during this time of severe drought throughout our state. Per capita consumption in San Bruno was already low compared to most other Bay Area communities. For the last reporting period in November 2015, water use in San Bruno down even further by 21%.

Another important initiative the City completed over the last year is our comprehensive Website redesign and upgrade. This project engaged the creativity and effort of employees from all departments across our organization to make sure that our website has the information residents, businesses and visitors alike need to know, that it is easy to navigate and most importantly that anyone who needs to conduct business with us can do so directly from their electronic device. Take a look and try it out, www.sanbruno.ca.gov. We would like to know your feedback to help us make the website even better.

Further on the City’s efforts to continually upgrade and improve the community’s infrastructure, the City Council has decided to supplement its annual funding for neighborhood street repairs over the next couple of years by adding $3 million to our street repair program using funds we received as reimbursement for the staff time required to respond to the ongoing community needs related to the 2010 PG&E explosion and fire.

Lastly in the area of infrastructure, during the coming year we are proud that we will see two new parks developed in our community. The long process to rebuild the Crestmoor neighborhood will be completed during the coming year with replacement not only of the streets, sidewalks and other surface infrastructure damaged in the explosion and fire, but with replacement of the neighborhood’s pocket park with a newly redesigned and expanded park that the neighborhood will be proud of. Ten homes that are being developed for sale to replace some of those destroyed in 2010 will be completed in the next few months and ready for the next generation of families to join our community and this very special neighborhood.

On the other side of town, near our downtown, we are excited to be able to add a completely new park at 324 Florida Ave. The City purchased this very special historic property last year from the Clayton family in order to provide the new park amenity in the neighborhood. Mrs. Clayton grew up in the house built in the early 1900’s by her grandfather, a master woodworker from Switzerland. Although the property had fallen into serious disrepair over the last many years, it still houses some beautiful examples of the master woodworker’s craft. We plan to save and restore some of the most significant pieces.

Looking forward to San Bruno’s future, this is truly a most exciting time for us. Working in coordination with the San Bruno Community Foundation, 2016 will see the first of the $70 million in Community Restitution funds deployed to fulfill the City Council’s objective to see that the funds are used to provide long term and enduring benefit to the entire San Bruno community. The Foundation has developed an aggressive program to make sure this is accomplished. In addition to establishing community grants and scholarship programs that the Foundation will deliver itself, the Foundation has developed plans to collaborate with the City this year to complete 4 projects designed to enhance and benefit the community. We will consider the proposals at our City Council meeting at the end of the month and we are anxious to get started quickly after. The Foundation proposes to provide funding to continue our new and successful two year tradition to celebrate our community with the Community Day in the Park event and to provide some needed pedestrian improvements in the downtown and in the Bayhill Office Park areas. Funds to assist the development of the new park at 324 Florida will assure that this community amenity is built soon. Lastly and most exciting is the offer of funding for completion of a facilities master planning process to set the vision for new community facilities including a library, swimming pool and recreation center. While we know that even $70million is not enough to fully pay for development of all these needed facilities, the master plan process will make sure the vision is set and we can move forward on all fronts to get funding in place over time.

There are two other initiatives front and center in the City radar screen that I also want to mention. First is the development of our community Walk and Bike Masterplan. Members of our Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee along with our staff have been busy out in the community for the last several months soliciting comments and suggestions from residents about how we can improve conditions throughout the City for pedestrians and cyclists and how we can make better connections among our bicycle and pedestrian pathways and between these pathways and our public transit corridors. Our goal is a completely bicycle and pedestrian friendly community. To date we have over 1,000 comments to us in developing the plan for City Council consideration later this year.

Also ahead for San Bruno is yet another step forward in our own San Bruno Cable’s continuing efforts to keep San Bruno at the forefront of the rapid growth in opportunities that evolving technology offers. The City Council met right before Christmas to approve a project to install direct fiber connections to every unit at the Shelter Creek Condominium complex. Once connected in the next few months, Shelter Creek residents will be able to access the Internet with 1 gigabyte bandwidth and speeds rivaling any in the industry anywhere. San Bruno Cable has struggled financially for the last several years as technology industry competition has eroded subscriber counts and revenue, but our commitment to the best available service and to meeting the needs of San Bruno residents has never wavered throughout the nearly 45 year history of this unique community resource. We look forward to using the fiber project at Shelter Creek as a solid example or test case for how further expansion of San Bruno Cable’s fiber network might perform in increasing subscriber revenues.

In closing, my remarks today would not be complete without some words about the continuing work our city is continuing to do to make sure that the necessary improvements are made to our State’s utility regulatory system and to our nation’s gas pipeline system operations so that what happened in San Bruno in 2010 never happens again, anywhere. Although our community has certainly triumphed over adversity and disaster, we will never forget what happened here. And, we have a responsibility to turn the legacy of that tragedy to something positive we can all be proud of. We have done that and more -- and still even more than five years later, we see that our work is not yet complete.

During the past year we have finally begun to see some positive changes and reform take shape. New leadership was installed at the California Public Utilities Commission with a new mission of real reform – a direct result of the City’s tireless work to highlight the real extent of corruption under former President Peevey’s administration that had plagued that public agency for at least the last dozen years seriously compromising transparence and public safety. In May, the Mayors’ Council on Pipeline Safety, a nation-wide coalition established by San Bruno and Allentown, Pennsylvania, hosted its first Pipeline Safety Conference engaging public officials, utility representatives and labor unions in a productive and timely discussion about safety initiatives.

In closing, I want to again thank each of your for being here today, for your interest and for your support to our community. As the New Year dawns, it is a time not only for reflection, but of preparation and energy to take on the challenges and to seize the opportunities that await in 2016. The San Bruno of tomorrow is in our hands. I look forward to working together with each of you to make this yet another year of accomplishment and pride for San Bruno.

Thank you.

/s/ Jim Ruane

The following is the schedule for the airing of the State of the City Address on Channel 1 throughout the rest of the month of January:

M-F 10am

M-Sat 1pm

Sun, Mon, Wed. and Sat. 9pm