I’m always depressed when a local business closes, but it’s especially bad news to lose a restaurant that is as good, casual, and local-friendly as the Two Fools Café.  We had an especially fond feelings for them becuase they were always friendly and unflappable when we brought our rambunctious two-year-old with us for dinner.

Seagulls feeding at the Ox Mountain Landfill (“the dump”) are suspected to be the cause of elevated E. coli bacteria levels at Venice Beach, reports Julia Scott in the San Mateo County Times.  The beach is currently posted for no swimming by the county Department of Health.

Data collected along the beaches of San Mateo County over the past 13 years by Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary will help answer that question. The agency has documented an unprecedented, localized seagull die-off just in the area surrounding the mouth of Pilarcitos Creek, according to research coordinator Jan Roletto.

A single day’s survey of a 3-mile stretch of Half Moon Bay State Beaches typically finds 60 to 80 dead seagulls, Roletto said.

None of the gulls are ever older than one year, and they are always emaciated by the time they die, she added.

The team concluded that the gulls were being killed by a fungal parasite, because they were already in a weakened state from eating unnatural food. And they suspect the dump is the source. A few weeks ago, I drove to the top of the road leading to the landfill and I was stunned by what can only be described as clouds of seagulls feeding on the garbage.  The article describes the steps that Allied Waste (formerly BFI) is taking to scare off the seagulls.

Note: The gull die-off occurred last year. There has not been another occcurance so far this year.

by Katie Sanborn

Susie Maya has made two big transitions within the last couple of months. Most Coastsiders have known her for the past 10 years as a cashier at Cunha, but now Susie’s the receptionist at the Coastside Opportunity Center weekdays and works weekend at Cunha. Her other big news? On Feb. 21, Susie was sworn in as an American citizen.

Becoming an American “was a dream for me. It was a dream I never forgot. It was like being born again. Opening a new book,” Susie said.

She has spent much of her 19 years on the Coastside providing for her eight younger siblings and getting them through school. “I had to make a decision. It was them or me,” she said of her younger siblings. So she chose them. “I wanted citizenship, but I never applied because I didn’t know what to do. And I work sometimes six days a week.”

By Ken Johnson

When the Half Moon Bay Review, the Cabrillo Unified School District, and CUSD Superintendent John Bayless intersect; there can be casualties. The first is truth. The second is student education. The third is good old-fashioned common sense.

This was the case in the Review’s editorial on 8 March 2006. The editorial misled the public about the true status of CUSD student achievement, graduation and dropout rates. In an attempt to provide a clearer picture of reality, I wrote a “Letter to the Editor”, which was published in this week’s Review. The editor also chose to include an “Editor’s note” citing information from CUSD Superintendent Bayless which further misled the public.

I got involved with the question of inaccurate graduation and dropout rates a couple of years ago. I went to a CUSD Board meeting with charts in hand showing a far different picture than the District was claming. I presented them to Superintendent Bayless for “review” before the meeting began. He objected to their accuracy and offered to review them in detail. I played along, having already concluded he needed to be treated as if he were a ‘hostile witness—know the answer to any question before you ask it’. His email response to me on Wed 03-Mar-04 10:03 was:

SamTrans is adding an additional bus run in the afternoon and one in the morning, to help alleviate problems that have led to students and worker being left off buses in the last few weeks. SamTrans will also adjust the path of Route 294 to pick up the kids at the El Granada Mobile Home Park. This expanded service, which SamTrans calls “Operation Sea Otter”, will last until the end of this school year, giving local agencies and the district time to find money, probably from grants, to serve these riders.

Cheri Parr, executive director of the Coastside Opportunity Center, which operates the buses under a contract with SamTrans, announced additional capacity at Thursday night’s meeting of the Cabrillo Unified School District.  SamTrans had added some additional capacity, but withdrawn it because it was concerned it couldn’t guarantee that level of service indefinitely. The new schedule is positioned as a temporary solution.

“Because of SamTrans, we no longer have an emergency,” said Cheri Parr.  “Now it’s up the the Coastside community to solve the long-term problem.”

At that meeting, the school board passed a resolution committing the district to working on the problem.

DISCLOSURE: Yes, Cheri Parr is my wife.

This week, the Half Moon Bay Police Department investigated the theft of an MP3 player from a locked gym locker at HMB High, warned a kid not to shoot people with a BB gun, and made a warrant arrest on Kelly Avenue.

Click “read more” for details.

Conga player Poncho Sanchez leads one of the most popular Latin jazz groups in the world today, paying homage to a tradition that was born when Afro-Cuban rhythms merged with bebop. You can sample his work at his website.

Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society is located at 311 Mirada Road, Miramar. Parking is in the back of the building. Doors open at 3 pm for buying tickets and saving seats. Music starts at 4:30, goes to 7:30 with an intermission. Reserved priority seating for members. $35, no member red tickets for this performance, with a $5 discount for those under 25.

As the perpetuation of the myth that “Downtown is doing just fine” continues, and as long as business owners stay focused on flower box arrangements instead a marketable product mix, businesses will continue to struggle to survive. Meanwhile, landlords and property managers remain at the ready, knowing that there will always be a plethora of dream-inspired gallery and gift shop owners lined up and ready to dive in with their retirement savings, unwittingly contributing to inflating the rents beyond the reach of normal business that would traditionally be able to serve the local community.

Madeleine Sausotte of Ocean Books and I have been looking for a solution. Last August, we released the findings of a survey of downtown merchants to local business groups, the results themselves disturbing.  Nearly half (48%) of the merchants who responded to the survey said they had been struggling to some degree over the last three years. Nearly three-quarters (72%) depended on their spouses, savings, or even loans, to keep their businesses going. A quarter said that their business was taking a toll on their health. Informally, the news was even worse. It pointed to a change in Coastside consumer purchasing patterns that, over the decades, has left many local businesses losing sales to malls, big box stores, and internet sales.

Even though the survey data clearly indicated some disturbing trends and the need for a follow-up Resident Survey, business groups remained indifferent.

In October of 2005, Madeleine announced a plan to follow up with a Coastside “Residents” Survey and to announce a future Town Meeting for early in 2006 to help develop the content of that survey. The goal was to help educate everyone about the current state of affairs and to ask in what direction people thought HMB needed to go. The meeting would be open to all, and the Chamber and the Downtown Merchants Association were to be invited, as well.

“Borrowing” the concepts for both the Resident Survey and the Town Meeting, the Chamber recently called a meeting at Ted Adcock Center on March 2nd, among  representatives of the City, a small number of merchants, the HMB Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Merchants Association. The purpose of the meeting had been planned to hear merchants’ wishes and concerns and address the relationships between the different organizations.

The issues brought up at that meeting, often mired in process, seemed more focused on new ways to continue to embrace the near-dry nipple of the tourist trade and the disturbing portrayal of the ongoing illusion of prosperity downtown than with actually addressing the needs of local residents.

Whatever discounts had been offered in the past to lure local consumers downtown hadn’t meant much, since - not surprisingly - consumers were not interested in buying art and gifts to feed and clothe their families. The locals continue to shop elsewhere and business owners continue to scratch their heads in wonderment, waiting to see which of the “other” business owners might bite the bullet and radically alter their product format enough to change the tide on Main Street.

The economic wind has changed its direction, yet again, and will continue to do so. The price of gas, the loss of time with family, and the wane of the novelty of the malls and the Big Boxes have altered purchasing desires. The captains of Downtown must reset their sails to accommodate those changes. Every time the wind changes, as fickle as the wind sometimes is, so must we consider changing the set of our canvas; sometimes even a change in course. We will go nowhere as long as the “powers that be” stubbornly insist that they have already sent the crew into the rigging to set their sails and that now it’s time to polish the brass.

Frank Long is the owner of Oasis Natural Foods on Main Street in Half Moon Bay

MCTV will show the tape of the meeting Monday, March 20, at 10am.

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors continued the process of revising their Midcoast Local Coastal Program on Tuesday morning.  Coastsider features our third of Darin Boville’s galleries of the testimony. As always, if you have any corrections on names or additional notes, please let us know.

About half the testimony was from supporters of the Big Wave project for developmentally disabled adults.  The County Times has a good summary of the meeting. Here are some highlights:

• The subcommittee of supervisors Jerry Hill and Rich Gordon reduced the growth cap from 125 to 75 units per year, which is still higher than the current growth rate of 52 units per year.
• The subcommittee withdrew its proposal to widen Highway 1 to four lanes, recommending that the plan focus on improving traffic flow with more turn lanes and bike lanes.  Chris Kern, the North Coast District Manager of the California Coastal Commission, told the supervisors that widening the highway to more than two lanes would cause the LCP to not be approved by the Coastal Commission.
• Forty water connections will be set aside to serve homes with failed wells.
• The supervisors will consider whether the Big Wave project should be considered for a separate LCP amendment.
• The supervisors will look into balancing the needs of the Harbor District for revenue generation from building on the Burnham Strip with the needs of the community to maintain the integrity of its original plan. The Harbor District has been pushing hard to develop the property and sent several people to testify at the meeting. Harbor Commissioner Sally Campbell stated, �We have used that property…to collateralize our $19 million worth of loans from the California State Boast and Waterways. A hit like that would be devastating…we need absolutely every asset and every part of revenue we can get.�

The board will return to the LCP revision in late spring.