It says something about the makeup of the invited crowd when it was distasteful to even carrion eaters.

I am hoping to learn more and understand which way to vote. 

This is important stuff.

Thank you

Pescadero has such a venue to meet those needs, but State thought only Native Son’s Hall was possible venue.  Native Son’s's undergoing retrofits and other constructive improvements.  State didn’t allow time for the Church to confirm availability and rushed for Press Release.

Turned out, twelve hours later, church was confirmed; however State moved to the HMB location, 18 miles north.

http://www.samtrans.com/Assets/SamTrans/Timetables/temp/Route_17_01-13-13.pdf

For those of you who dislike the 17 & 17L buses on your streets, this is the time to speak out.  Please make your concerns made known.

http://www.samtrans.com/Assets/SamTrans/Timetables/temp/Route_17_01-13-13.pdf

Needless to say “Not a Fan.” I’m hopeful, Montara will get to celebrate when Sam Trans completely implodes on itself- financially, and at this rate it wont be too long as tax payers, and community members alike dislike having this line in their back yards. Who in their right minds in Washington gives the 17 line 11 million dollars over 10 years when Sam Trans is hemorrhaging money?

on 12/26/12 the operator was driving bus #2900.  It is the same driver that is pictured above driving #2901 the next day -  12/27/12 passing by our home again.

On 12/26/12, at approximately 3:17pm, I was physically assaulted and injured by this Sam Trans / AV Transportation operator on Main Street nearest 6th Street and the Montara Post Office.

The operator of bus 2901 struck me in the temple with my dslr, and then he pummeled me with several punches to the face.  While he was physically assaulting me, he was telling me that he’s going to kill me.

Earlier that day, the same driver past our home while he was video taping me raking leaves from his bus window (while driving) which is a offense according to the SMCTA’s Sergeant Aquino.

After going to the hospital, I was diagnosed with a concussion and bruises to the neck and back; and I’ll need to convalesce for the next couple of weeks. Needless to say “Not a good Holiday Season for us this far.”

My family and I have reason to believe that this driver and his co workers will continue to be disruptive, and the driver himself has threatened us with more violence.

Any help you can be will be greatly appreciated by me and my family, so I can provide this information to the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department and get these maniacs out of our community.

Thank you,
Joel for Susan

While many have contacted the BOD, Sam Trans is quick to defend the line and their idiot drivers.  They’ve effectively turned Montara into a bus depot where drivers can run amuck without consequences. Even if they kill or injure a pedestrian, they go to arbitration and put the driver back on the job. htttp://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=19518

This is bad policy set by bad administrators, and they cover for each other in the way criminals cover up for each other.

Good luck getting a straight answers from anybody at Sam Trans. Be careful too, or they may do what they did to me, and try to assault you on public street; and in front of a witness too. 

Sam Trans says they care, but they only care to line their pockets at the tax payers expense. Oh, they care alright, so long as they don’t have to make any meaningful effort or deal honestly with property owners along their lines. There goes paradise.  I just wish there was a way to keep them off of my block on Farallone and 7th.  They roll through the stop sign there and at 6th and Farallone while making unnecessary and unnerving noise continuously. 

I take it that after 5 years of seeing your post here, there hasn’t been any comment.  That may be because Sam Trans has been effective at their game plan. Continually defiling this community and it’s inhabitants, scaring and frustrating them with the lack of consideration which Mark SImon - Exec. Public Affairs Director and his associate Lt. Victoria O’Brien of the Sam Trans Transit Authority Police are instrumental in promulgating. Their organization has demonstrated little or no empathy or resolution to these concerns, other than to intimidate and whitewash matters over these past several months / years of having the misfortune of having to be affected by them.

Is there anybody who can get a straight and truthful answer from these poor excuse of public servants?  That’s what I’d like to know. They tell me “...be patient, changes may be coming…,“but that’s what they’ve been telling other concerned / affected folks on this line for more than two years. What’s a reasonable period of time? How long does it take for change take happen. I guess, now, they must think we’re asses chasing a carrot and will buckle under their marshall law.

Good Luck - I mean that.

The only minor hiccup was that it took awhile to get an invoice and the write-up, but I attribute that to the holidays being in the middle.

I highly recommend Simms.

Description: Driver’s behaving noisily, speeding, running stop sign, etcetera, along route 17 in Montara. Sam Trans moves in and takes away public access, pollutes in more ways than one, is discourteous and deliberate.  Any complaints can be addressed to Mark Simon - SMCTD Exec. Off. for Public Affairs: 650.508.6340 and Lt. O’Brien 650.622.8045 Sam Trans Transit Authority.

Thanks for watching and contact Sam Trans to voice your concerns.

Stay from Bay Area Plumbing and Heating run by Lance Eastman out of San Carlos. He left our water heater and radiant floor heating plumbing in worse shape than he found it.

Still looking for a good plumber that has the specialty skills for radiant floors, preferably local.

I do care about how bad we in our several coastside communities are getting screwed. Financially, because I have no ax to grind with the level of service we are getting—nor with the level of service we got before the consolidation. We pay tax assessments on our house the same as other property owners. Indeed, we in Montara and Moss Beach (unfairly) pay a larger parcel tax than the rest of the district—an inequity brushed aside and allowed to continue by the district consolidators. But, as the many failed predictions promoting the now-consolidated coastside fire district show, it’s all just small-time political masturbation by a few pushing their agendas unless changes in situations allow problems to be addressed in an improved manner or changes in people produce new people with problem-solving potential.

Yes, hold to the fire the feet of those board members wishing to dump CalFire in favor of an independent operation. Their proposal must clearly be at least as good operationally and financially on a long-term basis as what they wish to replace. Clear to us citizens and not just a few wonks who hound their meetings. But there is no reason to get rid of them before their terms are up unless some clear alternative to what they are working for would solve the underlying problems, including the current unsustainable public employee pension setup in this misled state.

I’d sign a petition for a vote on re-separation of the districts, something we never got to vote on when they were consolidated. No guarantee that would be any better, but it would have the potential to let communities act closer to their own best interest and make their own cooperative deals with other agencies or negotiate with their own employees if they decided to go independent.

I normally agree with Carl, but this fire district fiasco is the one exception.  I certainly am a very strong believer in local control.  The bigger the government, the harder it is for average citizens to keep it in line.  Sacramento is completely out of control.  Don’t even bother asking me what I think of the Federal government.  I was against the consolidation of the two fire districts as pointless.  There was no reason why each district couldn’t contract out to Cal Fire separately without consolidating.  In fact, if it had been done that way, it would be a lot harder for the local yokels to rebuild either one of those old dysfunctional districts as a stand-alone district.  To this day, I still don’t see any benefit of that consolidation.  Savings of literally a few thousand a year by having 1 board instead of 2 is noise—within measurement error.

Well, Carl, you should care how badly you’re getting screwed.  You may have a bone to pick with Vince on the consolidation issue, but I don’t think that anyone except the 3 local yokels on the CFPD board can challenge his math, and you haven’t tried to do so, but rather just attack the messenger.  CalPERS is a disaster, and getting worse with each CalPERS board meeting.  One reason for that is that it’s apparently governed by union people representing the people who are and will be collecting CalPERS pensions.  CalPERS is going to implode within the next few years.  Defined-benefit pensions are no longer sustainable or viable.  Notice that the only defined-benefit pensions left are for government employees and some other unionized private business employees.  I don’t think that any non-government non-union employee has had a defined benefit pension in decades.

I can’t be sure, because few people with such disproven, failed, and locally rejected credentials, few people so out of touch with many in our locally independent communities who have voted time and again to have their own independent districts (such as the MWSD) and who are willing to pay for local control, quality, and independence, would have the nerve to continue to push their inappropriate, wonky, urbanizing, consolidating agenda. I guess part of my confusion also stems from a “Vince Williams” trying to come off as a financial sage at the same time I have been given the impression there is a “Vince Williams” in Moss Beach who can’t figure out how to put siding over Tyvek construction paper on his small house over many years time—hardly the manager of money one would want to heed on the much more pricey and difficult issues of fire protection and emergency services if I have the right guy in mind.

Local fixes to local problems are the way to go. Giving up and throwing oneself into the arms of ever-larger, more consolidated, more urbanizing, more corrupt, more politicized, more wealth-dominated uber-governmental structures dominated by special-interest campaign donors and money masters only assures that your government will be self-serving, more and more non-specific to the actual needs of real people in any given locale, and more freely corrupt because it does not have to be responsible to local, politically insignificant populations. What is pragmatic is making sure your government serves you. This cannot be done if your voice can be ignored and your vote is discounted. It cannot be done if local control is thrown away over nothing more than the siren song of financial babble apropos of nothing in actual communities.

Nothing about a CFPD recall that will not result in a substantially changed and potentially improved situation for the citizens of the former PMFPD requires more than a bemused “What did you expect from an inappropriately contrived, half-assed setup likely to fail from the outset”? It’s fine to sit this one out while the bickering elements of the consolidated CFPD down HMB way engage in their monkey-island scat fights. Look at the arguments of the two sides. In the consolidated setup making the communities of Montara and Moss Beach impotent voting minorities, we are screwed either way on the issues being contested.

The State and County write the laws and regulations and the “locals” have no choice but to deal with them. That is the history.  The days of a rural single engine department are long gone.  In the late nineties ERAF took funds away form local Special Districts and the County agreed to form the ALS/JPA putting Paramedics on fire engines.  As I pointed out many times before, our previous Point Montara Board was pretty “doltish”, out of control and the “local” electorate was pretty oblivious to that fact.  Many were appalled, when Measure H passed and the Chief and Firefighters all got big raises.  The Point Montara Board retroactively spiked pensions to 3%@50 with no consideration given to the citizens. It was a gift of public funds to business partners, board members and cronies. The Board carped about HMBFPD, cancelled the service contract, bungled the go it alone department and was angrily confronted by citizens.  That forced the merger and consolidation with HMBFPD.

The so called local control Carl May espouses was not evident at Point Montara. Where was Carl? Carping about local control on Coastisder.  He doesn’t do meetings.  He dispenses his opinion from blogs and everyone is supposed to listen to him. 

Today, 83% of the calls are emergency medical calls requiring a Paramedic.  The old Point Montara is almost as antiquated of a concept as Maybury RFD.  In 2007 Point Montara had $1.7M in revenue.  Today in San Mateo County, it takes $2.7M to $3.3M per engine using 56 hour work week L2400 rates.  Take a $1M difference divide it by 2000 households in MMB and it would be costing us a parcel tax today of $500 per household to have stayed independent and stayed with a 56 hour L2400 work week.  Accumulate $500 over the past five years and that’s $2500 every household in MMB saved over the “local control” option.  We’ve had a fully staffed engine at Station 44 and excellent service the last five years from CalFire and the Measure H parcel tax has been reduced year by year.  Point Montara could not have achieved that on their own. Our Point Montara Board in 2007 made the right deal for this community in entering into consolidation with HMBFPD.  I didn’t see Carl May at the LAFCo protest meeting on PMFPD and HMBFPD consolidation into CFPD.

Now, Carl is right, being part of a regional department has governance issues.  Director Riddell is a prime example.  At Point Montara he voted to give his brother and business partner a pension spike, was behind cancelling the service contract with HMBFPD and the go it alone fiasco in 2005.  Despite his reputation he was the top vote getter in the 2009 CFPD election due to name recognition and political contributions from Local 2400.  Do we step up to deal with what in my view is a rather crisp regional governance issue at CFPD or do we carp about some theoretical path not take fifteen years ago that was never really an option?

If Alifano, Mackintosh and Riddell are allowed to build a standalone department it will be a derelict department.  Riddell failed at Point Montara in 2005 already.  Mackintosh and Alifano have proven themselves incompetent.  By my estimates, they will burn through CFPD reserves and only be able to sustain two of the three stations with current revenue.  The alternative would be a parcel tax of about $250 to allow them to fund their crony department with a 56 hour L2400 work week.  I’d observe hitching our wagon to idiots via conosolidation would only be half the cost of Point Montara going alone and our old local out of control.

I’m a pragmatist not an ideologue.  The County and State are not going to go away.  Isolationism (localism) as a tactic only works on certain narrow issues.  Regional issues need to be dealt with.  We also need to be honest about our local failings and political impotence.  I’ve met many reasonable pragmatic people in HMB and elsewhere in the District that I may not agree with on every issue.  They are willing to work on this narrow issue and agree to disagree about other issues.  For me as an individual home owner, the math is pretty easy, $2500 property tax savings in the bank and stable affordable Fire and Emergency service going forward with CalFire for a few minutes of my time to sign three petitions and vote for three candidates that support CalFire.  Most regional elections are won by slim margins.  You can sit on the couch carping with Carl May or take a few simple steps to exert some control over your local political environment.

KEEP CALFIRE Recall Alifano, Mackintosh and Riddell

No matter how the present battle works out, no matter which camp of characters prevails, there will be other equally dire fire district crises in a few years, if not months. None of what is happening was supposed to be in the future according to the know-it-all consolidators a relatively few years ago. Obviously their prognoses were superficial and incomplete for what was possible in the real world. The differential in parcel taxes between what was the PMFPD and what was the HMB/EG district only highlights the ongoing screwing Montara and Moss Beach are getting in the consolidated failure and how incompetent and unfair the consolidation was for our communities.

It won’t make a dang bit of difference for us in MMB for the long term if we sit out these squabbles. We were sold out and made impotent in the consolidation, and that situation will remain. Budgetary problems will remain impossible, due partially to Sacramento-centric bludgeoning by the state. Unless fundamental structural corrections are made in the organization of the district in response to the current unworkable setup, citizens are better off concentrating their efforts on aspects of their communities where there is something positive and real to be accomplished.

If their plan gets implemented, there will be no savings with the standalone model they’ve decided to go with, that of the failing San Carlos Fire Department, which is having to brown out engines. With their lower salary and benefit scale, they can’t hire enough firefighters. And when 6 more do become available, they will be rookies, just graduated from academy. They have had to ask CAL FIRE to cover them during their brownouts.

In 2006-2007, we paid over a million dollars extra in overtime costs, because we had a revolving door of personnel who came, looked, tried it, and left. The others worked lots of overtime, and ended up with huge salaries because of it.
http://coastsider.com/site/news/coastside_firefighters_pay_averaged_155000_per_year_in_2007
Dir. Mackintosh keeps mentioning that he thinks overtime is cheaper than full time staff, meaning that his friends stand to gain big time under this new deal they’re setting up for them, with union support. Never mind the hazards of excessive overtime and fatigue in an already hazardous occupation, and the risks to life and property if an overly fatigued firefighter makes a wrong decision.

These are a few of the reasons some of us can’t just sit back and watch while our money goes down the drain and our lives and property are at risk. This isn’t fun, at all, but the alternative is worse.

So, we in Montara and Moss Beach never voted to be part of the current mess with CalPERS pension obligations and the farmed-out CalFire operation of the district into which we were so rudely consolidated by the votes of a few PMFPD directors of the time and several vocal locals with narrow, wonkish thinking about imagined financial advantages.

Why would we now want to jump into a cesspit not of our making by getting involved in a recall vote for a district in which we are a minor, irrelevant population? Why help with a recall petition over a power squabble when the outcome will leave us an impotent minority in a consolidated district no matter which way it turns out? Are we supposed to believe rearranging the fire district’s chairs will address the overarching long-term financial problems into which every smaller government—be it municipality, county, or special district—is forced because of our state-level financial hell?

When you lose local control in California, you lose your only hope of meaningful influence on government that directly impacts your daily life. Because we still will be stuck with the dictates of outsiders, we might as well sit out the bickering of the Half Moon Bay fire and emergency services department to which we were kludged. Let the people who created the pissing contest play amongst themselves.

sign the petition, then vote to keep a debt free district

Kathryn

Sign the recall petition to put this issue on the ballot. Volunteers are at post offices, New Leaf and Safeway

Kathryn

And anyone who doesn’t think development to the max, including zoning-violating residential building, in the quarry is not a factor in the road-widening attempt must have been born yesterday on this kind of issue.

1 out every 3 people living in the State of California lives in L.A. County!  More than 1/5 of the cities in California are in L.A. County!  Better that all those people are there than here.  But it also means that it’s more necessary and appropriate to spend more money there.

I go to L.A. a few times a year, and I don’t think that I agree with the characterization of lack of congestion.  Some of the freeways are not as bad as 20 years ago (double-decking the Harbor freeway on the south side of Downtown helped), but surface streets are all much much much worse.

If the Pacifica trip takes the same amount of time today as 10 years ago, that’s good, because I’m sure that traffic from the Midcoast including Half Moon Bay and from Pacifica has increased significantly in those 10 years.  When I moved here in 1994, I could pick up my boss at the north end of HMB at 8:25 and we’d be walking in the door at Stanford at 9:00.  I understand that to get there by 9 am today one must leave here before 8 am.  Today there are probably about 500 more houses in the unincorporated Midcoast and maybe the same increment in HMB compared to 1994.  SR 1 -> SR 92 traffic is now at least as bad every day as it was during the SR 1 closure at Devil’s Slide in 1995.

Anyway, adding a lane to SR 1 in that section of Pacifica is a loser.  The only solution for evening traffic would be an overpass from South (SW) SR 1 -> East (SE) Fassler.  It doesn’t need to be a full-blown 8-way interchange, just this single ramp will solve the evening commute problem.  Since I’m basically never there in the morning, I don’t know what’s needed to improve the morning northbound SR 1 traffic.  But in the evening commute, the problem very clearly is the large number of vehicles backed up waiting to turn left from SR 1 onto Fassler, which causes a jam-up all the way back up to the Sharp’s Park Blvd interchange.  Without a way to move more vehicles / hour through that left turn, it would take a lot more than 1 additional lane to keep the SR 1 through traffic flowing.

Next time you’re in Southern California, go check out the intersection of Sepulveda and 98th (one of the main entrances to LAX.)  Last time I was over there, I counted Sepulveda as 18 lanes at 98th!  18 lanes!  And it’s one of the most congested intersections I’ve ever seen.

The problem at SR 1 and Fassler isn’t lack of road capacity—it’s lack of intersection capacity.  Any traffic engineer who doesn’t understand that needs to turn in his traffic engineer title.

In this “podcast” he mentions that the bond term is for 25 to 30 years.
—————————————————————————————————
THE MEASURE S BOND MEASURE ACTUALLY STATES:

ADDITIONAL SPECIFICATIONS

No Administrator Salaries. Proceeds from the sale of Bonds authorized by this proposition shall be used only for the construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, or replacement of school facilities on the Bond Project List, including the furnishing and equipping of said school facilities, or the acquisition or lease of real property for said school facilities, and not for any other purpose, including teacher and administrator salaries and other school operating expenses.

Single Purpose. All of the purposes enumerated in this proposition shall be united and voted upon as one single proposition, pursuant to section 15100 of the California Education Code, and all the enumerated purposes shall constitute the specific single purpose of the bonds and proceeds of the bonds shall be spent only for such purpose.

Other Terms of the Bonds. When sold, the bonds shall bear interest at an annual rate not exceeding the statutory maximum, and that interest will be made payable at the time or times permitted by law.

The bonds may be issued and sold in several series, and no bond shall be made to mature more than 25 years (if issued pursuant to the provisions of the California Education Code) or 40 years (if issued pursuant to the provisions of the California Government Code) from the date borne by that bond.

Exhibit B-5
——————————————————————————————
Where do they come up with people who will lie to get this passed, or who are so un-knowledgeable as to not be aware of the basic features as stated in the wording of the Official Measure?

Property Owners are struggling and we can’t let these folks continue to take more money when they can’t manage the money they have already extracted from Property Owners.

I’m voting NO!!!

I’m surprised at the lack of discussion on our local Measure S, the Cabrillo District bond measure. Does no one remember how some of the last bond money (less than half of what would be in the S bond) was misspent and how the availability of the bond money for middle school improvement got us all into a decade of disastrous fighting over the North Wavecrest site? Does no one remember how that last bond measure was sold to voters, with almost exactly the same sob story about needed repairs to buildings and the like?

The lesson from that previous mistake, which I voted for at the time, is that any measure that does not precisely specify where the money will be spent cannot be trusted in this district. The supposed oversight is a joke. Bonds should always be closely examined, anyway, because the interest makes anything they are spent on extremely expensive; but leaving millions of dollars up to the discretion of the kinds of politicized and developer-serving people who have dominated our schools boards for several decades now is senseless. There must be better ways to make thousands of dollars worth of building repairs than setting up an account with tens of millions. No on S was an easy vote for me. A much better written measure might turn that around, and that could be accomplished without approving the current crap-shoot.

http://coastsidevideo.com/sites/hmb-high-school/pages/hmb-high-school-les-miserables-2012-trailer-coastside-video.html

Schedule for remaining shows:
   Friday 3/23 7:30 pm
   Saturday 3/24 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm  

Location: HMB High School auditorium.

Tickets available at the door and on-line here:
https://tix3.seatyourself.biz/webstore/webstore.html?domain=hmbhs&event;

Today, the leading vote-getter in the Republican primaries is Rick Santorum - a fundamentalist “Christian” extremist who seems to regard the Constitution as an inconvenience.

To me, it’s pretty simple:  God doesn’t need Government Assistance.  God can do just fine without the Government’s help. Jefferson’s “wall of separation” is intended to protect religious institutions from the government’s interference.

I wouldn’t mind having a little more real Christianity among our leaders in Washington DC—the “love thy neighbor,” “whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers,” etc.  Instead, the neo-Calvinist zealots and their transmogrified brand of “Christianity” seem to think that “small government” means going on “uterus patrol,” and determining with whom I can or can’t enter a state-licensed marriage contract.

I hate to remind ‘em, but Jesus was both unemployed and homeless!

Are you suggesting that volunteers take up law enforcement duties at the FMR? 

As I’m sure you are already aware the Friends of the FMR are prohibited from enforcing the marine mammal act and marine reserve rules.  FMR volunteers are not trained in law enforcement.

It would be good to educate the youth and put a stop to the misconception w/ that generation. Othewise, high schoolers would have about as much success transcribing it otherwise as many adults try… but with less crying and tantrums at the meeting.

In other words, if the county is the trusted steward and custodian of the Reserve, and the Reserve’s primary function is to serve as a Marine Sanctuary, then it stands to reason that as a good custodian and steward of the Reserve, it will seek to limit or otherwise restrict visitor impacts on the Reserve to the extent that these negatively impact its primary raison d’être as a safe haven for marine life.

All we are asking is that the county be a good host, just as you would if you opened the doors of your home to a large group of visitors.

If you chose, for example, to host a party in your home, and you found yourself overrun by unruly guests, you would seek to limit the number of people coming in the front door and do a better job watching the ones you are allowing in. You’d do this to safeguard your family, your valuables, and your home - so that you can keep hosting parties for many years to come.

Nothing different is being asked of the county.

—DavidV

If you try to close FMR to the public, you might have a situation such as Martin’s Beach on your hands.  Public access has been established.

Overuse at FMR is at least a 20 year old problem, from my own experience, so instead of getting angry and blasting Horsley, [or Philip Fradkin for not entertaining a call while he’s promoting his last book, see Comments section: (http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201108021000)], then focus on resolving the visitor center/entrance fee issue.

Channel Islands are federally protected and with permit access only.  Cabrillo National Monument requires permits for groups of ten or more.  (Entrance Fee.)
Monterey Bay Aquarium, albeit a commercial facility, is a revenue source and handles crowds. (Entrance Fee.)
But each of these are staffed to receive and manage the funds.

Although the county has the authority to implement management of its park, they have replied, “I agree in principle but limiting visitors without a visitor center or adequate staff to monitor, it is not possible at this time.”

You have agreement from the county on the need for a visitor center and staff, but the county’s busy dealing with its budget problems, and since no one’s dying at FMR and it’s not a money-maker, there is no immediate cause for concern.  Instead of finding fault with the county, provide them with the answer to:  How to implement a visitor kiosk/entry fee/permit system for field trips? 

Notification of the new policy will need to be sent to all universities and schools that visit FMR for field trips, as they are accustomed to arriving without notice, parking throughout the neighborhood, etc.  This includes a need to educate the general public who massively visit on weekends.  This includes the need to update the many internet sites that list FMR as a great place to visit.