San Bruno to take on quality-of-life issues

While San Bruno technically already has a residential parking program in place that allows residents to apply for permit district status, it isn’t used, councilmembers say. 

As streets become more and more crowded, the time is right to reevaluate mitigation strategies, City Manager Alex McIntyre said. 

Vice Mayor Marty Medina said he’s particularly excited to work on community engagement for the upcoming year. 

“It’s something I try to do on my own, [but] the city needs to do more of their part of keeping residents advised with all of the things that are happening,” he said.

The city has also promised to focus on retrofitting and upgrading its failing streetlight system. Streetlight power outages have plagued Councilmember Tom Hamilton’s District 2, he said. While those are set to be repaired, he’s happy to see a more proactive approach to the remainder of the city’s streetlights. 

“There are other neighborhoods in San Bruno that are on the same technology, and it’s only a matter of time before they fail,” he said. 

Hamilton is also looking forward to working on another major citywide initiative — keeping San Bruno clean through prevention of illegal dumping. It’s time for the city to put a stop to large-scale disposal of trash in public areas, he said. He cited one area on Seventh Avenue underneath Interstate 380 that has become a hot spot for people to dump trucks’ worth of garbage. 

“We really have to get after folks that are doing that,” Hamilton said. “They need to be caught and they need to be made an example of.” 

San Bruno will also place an emphasis on keeping its medians free of debris and garbage for the upcoming year. 

Lastly, city staff will take first steps to evaluate its own assets, including property and parking lots, City Manager Alex McIntyre said. 

“It’s looking, really, at all property the city owns. What is the highest and best use for these? What are the amenities that could be at each of these?” he said. “It’s asking those questions we don’t have the answers to.” 

McIntyre introduced his strategy of only selecting five priorities per year to the City Council when he began as city manager, and said it’s already been extremely helpful in setting and achieving goals. 

“If we have too many goals, the reality is we make no progress. This year we had five goals, and we made huge progress on all of them,” he said. 

Although the 2024-25 fiscal year is only halfway done, San Bruno has already sold CityNet. Stabilizing the financial future of its beleaguered cable service was set as a major goal for the year, and it has now been achieved, McIntyre said. 

“It hasn’t been a financially viable model for many years, and I’m glad we’re finally able to sunset in a way that’s going to be positive for our city,” Hamilton said. 

In addition, the city has made progress on beautification efforts — opening Centennial Plaza in October 2024 and starting construction on Florida Avenue Park — and analysis of development and staff compensation are underway.