Editor,
Councilmember Michael Brownrigg’s remarks at Monday’s Burlingame City Council meeting on sea-level rise were less a policy discussion and more a declaration of personal destiny. He warned OneShoreline not to be “beaten back by the naysayers,” claimed the issue is “critical to the country,” and suggested that if salvation requires building a levee 10-15 feet into San Francisco Bay, he is ready to “take that fight on.”
He even referenced what happens in “closed sessions with interest groups,” followed by the ominous reassurance: “I know you know what I am talking about.” Actually, residents don’t know and that’s the problem. Public waterways should not be reshaped based on winks, nods and backroom conversations.
Brownrigg spoke with certainty about power and green lighting shoveling dirt into the Bay, but said nothing about the Bay’s ecosystem, the displacement of water or the increased flooding in poorer regions that will pay the hidden price for his grandiose, speculative ideas. I guess environmental justice no longer matters.
Dismissing concerned citizens as “the everything should stay the same crowd” is not leadership. Neither is wrapping massive environmental consequences in the banner of the “public good” while bypassing open debate.
This is a City Council, not a royal court. No one was elected king of the Bay. Burlingame deserves humility, transparency and science, not grand speeches about “big ideas” delivered as if dissent were a nuisance rather than a public right.
Grace Xuereb
Burlingame
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(1) comment
Thanks for your letter, Ms. Xuereb. Sounds like Mr. Brownrigg and the Burlingame City Council should increase their budget for legal services in the near and far future because I’d recommend folks inundate Mr. Brownrigg and the City Council with No Bay Kings lawsuits to impose delays until 2031 when, according to AOC, the world will end due to climate change. Okay, let’s get real, impose delays forever…
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