San Bruno is one of the last communities in the country to maintain their own cable TV and internet provider services. There are definite advantages to not dealing with a large corporation and the council has advocated for keeping it and focusing on providing new services like fiber. However it’s hard to ignore that the services provided currently by San Bruno CityNet Services are inadequate when compared to services provided in neighboring communities. If we are to keep this service, we must be creative in finding adequate funding to make upgrades. First, we must immediately end the practice of diverting profits from CityNet into the General Fund to balance the budget instead of reinvesting in CityNet to improve services and stay more current. We should explore selling the Citynet office site on El Camino (the City might get $5M to $7M for that property based on recent sales) and moving those services to City Hall, then use the proceeds to start the fiber project and make other changes to improve the service experience for our residents.
for San Bruno City Council 2020
I like the idea of selling CityNet site on ECR. I also propose that SB to sell City Hall, Library, and maybe Fire Station on ECR, and buy the roughly 25 acre Crestmoor HS property to repurpose the existing buildings, which already contain adequate space for city hall, library, a civic center. …and even CityNet.
We would want to think carefully before moving the fire station, and talk to the fire team — where they are is a great central location from which to reach most parts of the city quickly. I’d agree though with the idea of selling the existing City Hall and CityNet office to be redeveloped into higher value multi-story mixed-use structures. And once you did that, the parking lot south of the station that serves the existing Civic Center might also be considered for infill. That all seems like it would be within the scope of the vision laid out by the Transit Corridor Plan. Getting a valid bid in for Crestmoor at this point seems implausible, and I’d kinda like to see civic functions, especially the library, kept as transit-accessible as possible. I still think if a deal could be reached with the operators of Tanforan, building some new structure to replace a chunk of parking lot there would be ideal, and you could move into one of the derelict department store spaces until that was ready.
The Crestmoor site is accessible only via Courtland Ave and Piedmont Ave. Happy to ask our Fire Chief whether this site is appropriate for our main Fire Station in terms of appropriate access to the neighborhoods it serves, but I think we know what the answer would be. The increase in response time, especially to neighborhoods east of El Camino, would be unacceptable so the Fire Station would either need to remain and not be part of a land-swap or be relocated somewhere else nearby to its current location. I do not advocate for either option.
Hi Jeffrey, I don’t believe the land values for City Center (even if you include the CityNet office) and the Crestmoor High School property to be anywhere close to equal to facilitate a land-swap deal. I wouldn’t be in favor of it anyway…as you’ve pointed out correctly in other forums the Crestmoor HS site is not adequately served by public transit, so moving our City Center to the area would be extremely problematic. In addition, we have many residents who walk or bike to City Hall in order to pay their water bill or access other City services; moving these services into the hills–even if a shuttle were available–would be a slap in the face to our neighbors east of El Camino, so I would not be in favor of this.
San Bruno is far from a shining example of good urban planning, having grown via sprawl and subdivision development instead of by forward-looking planning. But the fact that our Civic Center is centrally located is one of the few things that is set up appropriately.