Town Of Hillsborough: State Of The Town 2020

Press release from Town of Hillsborough:

January 05, 2021

During the December 14th virtual City Council meeting, outgoing Mayor Shawn Christianson delivered the annual State of the Town address.  A transcript of the speech is included below.  You may also watch a YouTube recording of the live speech by clicking here.

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GOOD EVENING, AND WELCOME AGAIN TO OUR DECEMBER 2020 City COUNCIL MEETING- the final one of this extraordinary year, and my last meeting both as Mayor of Hillsborough, and as a Council member. It is my privilege to deliver the State of the Town address as we close 2020, and collectively LOOK FORWARD (and we REALLY, REALLY MEAN THAT this year), to what’s to come in 2021.

In a much more innocent time- ten months ago, in early February 2020- at the conclusion of the Town’s annual Goal Setting and Management Workshop, I ended my comments by saying, with enthusiasm,

ONWARD TO 2020. MAY WE HAVE THE CLARITY OF VISION SUCH A YEAR SUGGESTS!

I remember thinking THEN that the challenging year of my two years as Mayor was behind us, for in 2019 we had managed significant transitions in Town leadership, including welcoming a new City Manager and Police Chief, while marking the retirements of the wonderful folks who had gone before them. In 2019, we also had encountered our first ever multi-day Public Safety Power Shutoff by PGE, and worked to pass the Town’s first truly proactive fire safety ordinance- called WUI, for Wildland Urban Interface- to attempt to better prepare our city for the changing fire threats being so profoundly experienced throughout California. 

On that February day it seemed that NOW we’d be well-positioned to move forward with a number of initiatives on our Town’s, and my mayoral, to do lists, but as we were soon to learn, things were about to change in ways none of us could have imagined. 

In the ten months following that day, clarity of vision became an increasingly rare commodity. Most of us probably don’t remember experiencing a MURKIER  time, as uncertainties abounded, state, federal and county mandates changed rapidly (sometimes even hourly), and the term UNPRECEDENTED became a far too frequent part of our daily vocabularies. For months after the Shelter In Place Order’s imposition, every day, Monday- Friday, Town leadership, myself included, attended one hour briefings through the County’s Office of Emergency Services, while we all worked mightily to find the most tenable paths forward through terrain none of us had ever before travelled. I’m sure everyone hearing these comments knows that feeling all too well, for in navigating the year that has been 2020, we’ve all encountered our own versions of figuring out how to fly the plane while designing it. 

As the months of 2020 passed, the public health crisis presented by COVID-19 was joined by tumultuous civil unrest and calls for social justice, economic upheaval, divisive national elections, and a devastating and seemingly unending fire season in the West. In due course, I both declared a State of Emergency, and advised of the imposition of a curfew, two actions I never anticipated would be part of my duties as Mayor of Hillsborough. I cannot sugarcoat it- any way we look at it, this has been a challenging, and often bleak, year.

AND YET, THROUGH IT ALL, WE HAVE PERSISTED. I am pleased to report that the Town has risen to the occasion admirably. Our Town, and its approximately 11,500 residents, are remarkably resilient.

We reinvented almost everything we do this year in delivering services to our residents. Many of these reinventions will enhance process and expedite outcomes even when they are no longer required by social distancing, or other health safety protocols. 

After a dip in planning and permitting activity during the initial months of the Shelter In Place ordinance, we’ve now seen an uptick, with current planning and permitting activity running ahead of both expectations, and last year’s pace at this time. 

While we started the year with one draft of our budget, through the foresight of Town leadership and our Finance department, a mid-year review resulted in some adjustments to reflect potential volatility resulting from Covid-19’s economic impacts. The overall budget outlook in Town now is firmly on track, and among other things, steps we have taken in the past few years to create pension stabilization funds will continue to position the Town’s strong financial health.

Although the doors of Town Hall aren’t open in their traditional sense due to safety protocols, Town Hall is very much open for business, and has been throughout these months of the pandemic. Currently, 95% of Town staff is working on site in Town Hall, which required providing robust safety measures and programs for our staff, and the community. 

We created new ways of communicating with our residents this year, including sending daily electronic updates during the early months of the pandemic, to ensure that our residents had timely, relevant information to assist in their daily decision-making as guidelines and mandates rapidly evolved. 

Our remarkable first responders- police and fire- both kept our community safe, and deployed repeatedly on mutual aid calls, all while meeting the challenges of ensuring the safe delivery of excellent public safety services to our residents, while working under the pandemic’s ever-changing procedures, laws and protocols. Our Central County Fire Department went out on eight wildland fire deployments, while our Police Department answered the call repeatedly for mutual aid requests throughout Northern California to assist with regional fires, evacuations, power outages, civil unrest, and public safety power shutdowns.

Public Works completed miles of both water and sanitary sewer pipelines, and our Town’s roadways have improved to a pavement condition index of 84- the second highest in the County. I know our Department of Public Works has that first position firmly in their sights! The Town received the Bay Area Conservation Award for having the highest WaterPortal subscription rate of any community, demonstrating the Town’s commitment to the intelligent use of water- one of our most precious resources.

And we have accomplished some of those initiatives I’d optimistically looked forward to back in February 2020, including passing a gun storage safety ordinance, evaluating and beginning to implement the replacement of our Finance Department’s 20-year old financial software system, revisiting our pest management programs to eliminate toxic pesticide use on Town-owned property, laying the groundwork for the Town’s participation in the local Villages program which facilitates neighbors helping neighbors age in place, rolling out the Zonehaven emergency evacuation plan along with our county neighbors, and assisting a dedicated group of residents in having Hillsborough recognized as a Firewise community, which should help manage both our fire risks and our access to fire insurance coverage. Perhaps most excitingly, we moved forward with a remarkable and rare gift of land, complete with an endowment, from an enormously generous and public minded resident. This gift of over three, level, wooded, and beautiful acres, complete with a gracious home and useful, charming outbuildings located in the southern part of Hillsborough, creates wonderful opportunities for community and educational programs, a unique event location, an alternative worksite to the existing Town Hall complex for Town staff and its departments, potential occasional resting and sleeping quarters for our Town’s first responders, who sometimes must live much too far away due to the high cost of housing locally, and promising the community’s long-term enjoyment of, and access to, this peaceful, botanically significant and unique property.

While 2020 has been a year of very little pomp, but a great deal of circumstance, we have helped our Town partners, such as HBF, the Hillsborough City School District, and the Carolands, with some very successful socially distanced community celebrations, including Crocker’s drive-through Graduation, which I was privileged to lead, a drive-through Halloween event at the Carolands, a virtual Veteran’s Day commemoration, and most recently, a festive holiday drive-through Light Up the Town, beautifully planned and executed by HBF, with the support of the Town and the Hillsborough Police Department.

During these trying times, Hillsborough has also been a good neighbor, assisting our larger community as it dealt with the economic upheaval wrought by the pandemic. The Town supported an initiative by a motivated and caring group of residents, called Hillsborough Helping, to alleviate food insecurity through Samaritan House’s food distribution networks. To date, through our collection boxes at Town Hall, and two other Town locations, we have collected, and provided for distribution, over 1400 bags of groceries. This initiative continues, and sadly, the need for it has only intensified as time passes. 

In May, we also contributed $20,000 to the San Mateo County Strong Fund, designed to support small business loans and assistance anywhere in San Mateo County. This was not only the right thing to do, and supports local businesses on which our residents depend, but it also ultimately provides a financial benefit to the Town, which receives annual sales and use tax contributions from the County, generated by these very businesses. The generosity of our residents is legendary, and I know that as the community emerges from the pandemic in the year ahead, we will be there, shoulder to shoulder, to help this community rebound to reclaim its world renown vitality and innovative spirit.

There are, also, however, challenges ahead for our Town, of which we all must be mindful. Wildfire risks and water scarcity are not going away, so we need to continue to manage those risks and resources intelligently, to preserve our cherished quality of life and ensure the safety of our homes and residents. The implementation of our Wildland Urban Interface ordinance needs to continue to be pursued with vigor.

And on the topic of quality of life, throughout my eight years on the Council, a recurring area of discord has been the Town’s response to infrastructure needs and carrier applications related to cellular coverage. This year, as so many of us have worked from, and been educated in, our residences, the necessity of reliable, fast and uninterrupted connectivity has truly been driven home.  While this is an area of highly charged views on all sides, it is imperative that cellular infrastructure NOT become the “third rail” of Hillsborough politics. We need to allow the Town’s leaders, and its residents, to discuss this topic in the same way we strive to address all other topics in Town- with respect for disparate views, and without fear of reprisal.  This should not be treated as an “us versus them” scenario, for like it or not, the Town WILL receive applications for installations from cell carriers, and the Town will be obligated to respond, under FCC regulations, in the very short timeframes created by externally imposed shot clocks. To the extent that the Town can find common ground on what those required responses look like, it is to everyone’s benefit. 

And while concerns for preserving our Town’s bucolic character and the aesthetics that we love are intimately entwined with these cell coverage concerns, the Town’s response to the housing challenges before us has the potential for much more profound impacts on those aspects of our community than cell towers ever could. While Hillsborough is one of the only communities in the Bay Area that has historically not only met, but exceeded, its state established housing provision requirements, the RHNA numbers we are currently seeing (RHNA stands for Regional Housing Needs Allocation) dwarf anything we have seen in the past. While Hillsborough remains dedicated to doing its part to meet the housing needs of our community, it will take creativity and resolve to meet this ongoing challenge going forward.

Fortunately, we are a Town that is good at meeting challenges. This starts with our amazing residents, including the hard-working Committee volunteers, and is enhanced by the talented, dedicated men and women who comprise our Town’s staff, and lead its departments. It has been my special privilege as Mayor for the past two years to work with all of them, and they have my profound thanks, both as a Council Member and a resident, for the care, professionalism, and can-do spirit they bring to work every day.  

And to my fellow Council members, I really can’t say enough good things about each and every one of you. Each year you devote hundreds, and sometimes even a thousand plus, hours to the Town’s and larger community’s well-being, and you do so wholly without compensation, plowing forward through difficult issues with good will, intelligence and no reward save for that which comes from feeling like you’ve perhaps contributed to the greater good. You aren’t thanked often enough, but please know that you have my deep gratitude and respect for your leadership, selflessness and courage. I shall miss working with you all, and I wish our two new Council members, Dr. Sophie Cole, and Christine Krolik, great success going forward. The Town is so fortunate to have Christine and Sophie joining Al, Marie and Larry at the helm.

Lastly, to my extraordinary husband, our sons, and the rest of my family and dear friends, your support throughout these years of public service has enabled, encouraged, and inspired me. You have put up with a lot, and somehow had the grace to actually smile while doing so. I only hope I am as supportive of all of you when you need me to be, as you have been of me and my endeavors.

I end by noting two promising, very recent occurrences, since we all need optimism to carry us through the weeks and months ahead. First, it rained this weekend, and there’s rain in the forecast for the week ahead. Second, the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine, doses of which are wending their way to distribution points in the Bay Area even as I speak tonight. While I can’t take any credit for either of those things, and they won’t change our duty to be water wise, fire vigilant, wear our masks, and regrettably stay at least 6 feet apart for a while longer,  I can certainly celebrate these developments with all of you, as harbingers of hope that better days may truly, at last, be just around the corner. 

THANK YOU AND WARMEST WISHES FOR HEALTHY AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS, AND A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR AHEAD.

This press release was produced by the Town of Hillsborough. The views expressed here are the author’s own.