The County Times notes that county election officials are still counting ballots. On the county’s election site, the most recent results, posted on Wednesday, are listed as “Semi-official”. The county plans to update its counts on Friday at 4:30pm.

In the closest finish, for Pt. Montara Fire Protection District board, Alex King defeated Bruce McKimmie by a margin of only 10 votes, with King at 623 and McKimmie at 613

There was one other piece of business that clearly got strong reaction on the board. Superintendent Bayless’s assistant, Roberta Carlson, is retiring. Everyone made it clear that she was going to be missed. I’ve always found her to be helpful, efficicient and responsive, and it’s clear she’ll be missed by everyone in the district.

Superintendent Bayless opened with a presentation of how he would trim the building costs from $32 million to $26 million to fit with the district’s budget and deliver a finished school “about September, 2009”.  The school will be rebuilt in three phases, with the new building going up first, the main building being renovated next, and the administration building renovated and the wings near it being taken down last.

The discussion was relatively restrained compared to the prior meeting, with newly re-elected Mayor Jim Grady renewing the city’s offer to expedite the building of the school. Several pro-Wavecrest citizens asked the board to get on with it and vote to build the school at Cunha. 

In discussion, board member Jolanda Schreurs said it was time to “Make lemonade from the lemon that is Cunha.” adding that perhaps we could make it raspberry lemonade and that our kids deserve some sugar in their lemonade.  Board President Dwight Wilson urged, “We’ve got to figure out how not to make enemies of our neighbors with this decision”, a clear response to the lingering unhappiness of Wavecrest supporters.

After a long discussion about adding some “Whereas” clauses to the resolution, the board finally added a clause saying that it may ask the Superintendent to buy adjacent properties to the Cunha site.

Then came the main event. The vote was quick and unanimous.  There was some applause at the anticlimactic decision, and the board moved on to the rest of its agenda. Most of the audience had already left the room.

The Cabrillo Unified School District board will try to vote again tonight on whether to locate the middle school at Cunha, the site the district’s expert panel determined would be half the price and twice as fast as the alternatives.

The biggest news in Tuesday’s election was the election of Naomi Patridge and the re-election of Jim Grady and Mike Ferreira to the Half Moon Bay City Council.

Patridge, in her first election in eight years, returned at the top of the balloting with a significant lead over second-place Jim Grady.  Third place was a squeaker, with Mike Ferreira defeating second-time candidate Bonnie McClung by just 59 votes.  Newcomers George Muteff and Steve Skinner brought up the rear.  Both Muteff and Skinner ran surprisingly strong campaigns and it showed in the tallies.

The results meant that the LCP-backed group of Ferreira, Grady, and David Gorn will continue to hold a majority of seats on the City Council. Patridge and ally Marina Fraser will be in the minority.  Both advisory measures (O & P) on eminent domain and water recycling passed overwhelmingly.

In the Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District, Gary Burke and former firefighter Lane Lees (who just won a $600,000 settlement against the district) will be seated on the board.

Both incumbents in the Coastside County Water District election, Chris Mickelson and Ev Ascher, will return.

All incumbents in the Montara Water and Sanitary District will return to office.

Ginny McShane will return to the Point Montara Fire Protection District board, but will be joined by Alex King.  Board member Bruce McKimmie was the only Coastside incumbent to be defeated on Tuesday.

There’s really not much more to report. It’s all been said already. Feel free to share your opinions by clicking on the “comments” link above.

Under Half Moon Bay’s new campaign finance ordinance, voters who own companies are able to donate three times as much as voters who do not.

Individuals are limited to donating $250 to a single candidate in a single campaign. “Organizations” are limited to $500.  Several contributors have used companies they own or control to donate $500 to candidates. One has donated $500 from his corporation and $250 individually. Another donated at total of $599 to one candidate.

In addition the political action committees and unions who donated money to the candidates, the following individually-owned companies put money into the campaign.

• Realtor Millie Golder has donated $500 from her business to Naomi Patridge and George Muteff.
• Ken Jones, the wealthy former school board president, used his Western General corporation of Pierre, SD, to donated $500 to each of Naomi Patridge, Bonnie McClung, and George Muteff.  In filings from Muteff and McClung, the ownership of Western General is not listed. Patridge listed Jones as the owner. In last year’s school board election, Jones donated $1500 each to Charles Gardner and John Moseley.
• Premier Termite, owned by Kevin Palmer, donated $500 to Naomi Patridge.
• Kenmark Real Estate, Ocean Colony Partners Golf Links, and Ocean Colony Partners each donated $500 to Patridge’s campaign. These companies are not individually owned, but have few shareholders, and have overlapping ownerships and business interests.
• Canada Cove Mobile Home Park donated $500 each to McClung, Patridge, and Muteff. Only Patridge listed Jack Verderame as the owner on her form.  Verderame also donated $99 to McClung’s campaign individually.
• Branscomb Farms LLC in Woodside donated $500 to George Muteff. K.C. Branscomb Kelley, of Branscomb Farms LLC, donated $250 personally to Muteff.
• Curley and Red’s donated $500 to George Muteff.

Half Moon Bay’s campaign finance law is a good step in the direction of cleaner politics.  But it doesn’t go far enough. It isn’t right that people who have corporations should be allowed to contribute two or three times as much as those of us who do not.

A sound argument can be made that only individual human beings should be allowed to contribute to political campaigns, and that corporations, unions, PAC’s, and other non-human entities that don’t have a vote shouldn’t be permitted to contribute.

I also recommend reading the Review’s two articles on campaign contributions and the No More Delays PAC.

You can download PDF’s of the candidates’ and No More Delays filings from Coastsider:

• Mike Ferreira
• Jim Grady
• George Muteff
• Bonnie McClung
• Naomi Patridge
• Steve Skinner
• No More Delays

A strong majority of Coastside voters would vote for a parcel tax to support locals schools, but winning the two-thirds necessary to pass a tax will require the district to get everything right. That’s the message of a private survey Coastside voters to determine the feasibility of a parcel tax. 

Cabrillo Unified School District board members Dwight Wilson and Jolanda Schreurs helped plan the survey and the results will be presented to the board.

About 60% of respondents said they would vote for a $250 per year per parcel tax.  But 32% of the respondents said they agreed strongly or somewhat with the statement “Taxes are already too high, I would never vote for a tax increase no matter how it might be used”. That means any tax proposal must receive a very high percentage of undecided voters.

In June of 2003, a $250 per year per parcel five-year tax lost with 65.4% of the vote.

One hurdle is that district must overcome a perception of fiscal mismanagement.  41% of respondents disagreed strongly or somewhat with the statement “I trust the Cabrillo Unified School District to properly manage tax dollars” and 34% agreed with “The schools already have enough money, they just aren’t spending it properly”. Specifically, 51% of respondents said the District’s management of bond funds was either fair or poor.

An easier hurdle is that the district must resolve the location of the middle school.  36% agreed with the statement “I won’t support any measure for the District until they make a final decision about the location of the middle school”. The district will have another opportunity to resolve this issue at their next meeting, this Wednesday, November 9.

Respondents seemed to have a generally high opinion of the elementary schools in the District, and quality of teachers.

The arguments in favor of the tax that received the strongest support from respondents had to do with recruiting and retaining quality teachers, as well as bringing back school buses. At the end of the survey, the percentage of respondents supporting a parcel tax rose from 59% to 61%

Only 26% of respondents had children in district schools, which is close to the District’s estimate of 30%.  Another 10% had children in private, parochial or home schools. 

Only 3% of the respondents described themselves as Hispanic. This is probably due to the fact that likely voters were surveyed. It’s a sobering reminder that a large percentage of the parents of kids in our schools either don’t or can’t vote in school board and parcel tax elections.

I may be biased, but Montara is still the best place on the Coastside for Halloween. This year’s holiday was once again crazy, mysterious, eccentric, and creepy.

Montara-based photographer Darin Boville got some great shots this year that captured the madness and the silliness and the free margaritas, with a subtle, eerie lighting.

Click “read more” to see the rest of the album.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published Thursday a revised proposal that reduces by 82 percent the area proposed to be designated as critical habitat for the threatened California red-legged frog. The Service also opened a public comment period on the proposal, which ends on Feb. 1, 2006.

In northern San Mateo County, the habitat has been reduced from roughly the entire area between between Highway to 280 and the developed coastal zone, to the area around the Crystal Springs Reservoir.

The frog has been found on several Coastside development sites, including Wavecrest and Half Moon Bay’s new park.

The proposal is revised from a habitat area of 4 million acres in April, 2004, down to 800,000 acres today.  Critical habitat has been eliminated from Fresno, Mariposa, Plumas, San Diego, San Joaquin, Sonoma, Tehama, and Tuolumne counties.

Critical habitat represents the potential habitat of a species and does not necessarily reflect its actual habitat. This change in designation shouldn’t affect sites where the frog has been found.

Paradoxically, the analysis that reduces the critical habitat is based on lost development opportunities could total as much as $497 million over 20 years.

Of the 89,201 housing units projected to be built in the 23 counties over the next 20 years, 760 of them or 0.9 per cent, would not be built as a result of designating critical habitat, according to CRA International.  The projected impacts are greatest in following counties: San Luis Obispo ($166 million), Alameda ($91 million), Contra Costa ($88 million) and Santa Barbara ($41 million).

The Service is revising the habitat area becuase of a court order in a lawsuit brought by the Home Builders Association of Northern California, California Chamber of Commerce, California Building Industry Association, California Alliance for Jobs, and the Building Industry Legal Defense Fund.

Public comments on the proposed rule will be accepted until Feb. 1, 2006.  Written comments on the proposal should be submitted to the Field Supervisor, Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2800 Cottage Way, Suite W. 2605, Sacramento, CA  95825, or by facsimile to (916) 414-6712.  Comments may also be sent by electronic mail to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). 

Requests for public hearings on the proposal must be submitted within 45 days to the Field Supervisor, Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2800 Cottage Way, Suite W. 2605, Sacramento, CA 95825.

• Report on proposed habitat [PDF]
• USFWS website on red-legged frog habitat
• Full-sized map of 2005 proposed habitat in San Mateo County [PDF]
• Full-sized map of 2004 proposed habitat in San Mateo County [PDF]
• Full-sized map of 2005 proposed habitat in Northern California [PDF]

This report is based on the USFWS press release.  Click “read more” to see the release.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel has the best account of the attack in the mainstream press, which adds the scary detail that Tim West was attached by the leash to the board during the incident.

He feels lucky, that he was still paddling at the time and not sitting: “Had my legs been dangling off the sides they would have gone in the jaws, I’m sure.”

The attack threw him two feet in the air, he said, but it didn’t register what was going on until a few seconds later, when he saw the shark next to him—with his surfboard in its mouth.

“It was thrashing around like a fish out of water,” he said, until the surfboard came loose and then everything went calm. He said his leash didn’t break so he was attached to his board the whole time, which was really scary.

The NY Times News Service tells us that the great white shark that attacked a surfer off the Sonoma County coast a couple of weeks ago was roughly the size of a Chevrolet Suburban.

Since 1952, when records started being kept, there have been 111 attacks on the West Coast in which a white shark has bitten a person, and 10 fatalities.

Sixty percent of the attacks were at sites of previous attacks. There were five attacks off Salmon Creek Beach, six near the Farallon Islands and nine off Tomales Point.

Surfing Magazine has some photos of Tim West and his damaged board and a very detailed account.

“At first I thought it was a seal or some seaweed or a boil,” West, 25, shaken but otherwise unscathed, said the next day in an interview at his home about a mile from Maverick’s. “Then I saw this gray thing just thrashing by my board. I swam away, to the end of my leash, and all of the sudden the thing disappeared and everything just stopped. It went dead calm. I reeled in my board and just paddled straight toward the reef. I didn’t even care about waves – just get me into the whitewater.”

Loeswick, sitting inside, saw the strike. “I glance up and his board gets shot out of the water, and there’s all this splashing,” Loeswick, 20, said. “It was surreal. I just freaked out and started calling his name: ‘Wwwweeeesssstttt!’ I was stoked to see that he was OK. We both paddled as hard as we could toward the rocks. He was maybe 100 feet farther out than I was, but he was so pumped on adrenalin that he just blew right by me.”

West: “Every stroke, I was thinking my life was over.”

A rock is thrown through a windshield in Miramar on Halloween, a overdose call leads to a struggle with handcuffed victim, a shark gets a mouthful of surfboard instead of surfer, deputies execute a warrant arrest at the Johnson Pier in Princeton Harbor and arrest a “pedestrian” lying on a piece of cardboard in Princeton, and a guy holding drugs calls 911 and thinks better of it too late to avoid a visit from the deputies.
For details, click “read more”