The Devil’s Slide tunnel(s) will be named in honor of the late Congressman Tom Lantos.  On July 3, both houses of the California State Legislature have unanimously agreed to call it/them the “Tom Lantos Tunnels at Devil’s Slide.”

Paul Perkovic is Board President of the Montara Water and Sanitary District, however this article reflects his individual views and does not indicate a position of the District.

We can spend our local tax money on recreation, or we can let it wither away. With the failure of Measure O in the recent election, there is no guaranteed source of funds for Coastside recreation.

Today, a portion of your 1% property tax money offsets costs of your water and sewer service, called “enterprise operations” because they are operated like a business on a fee-for-service basis. But Sacramento has its eyes on that local tax money to help solve the state budget crisis. There may be time to keep up to $1,287,500 a year in the community, for local recreation uses, if we act promptly and responsibly.

If that property tax revenue were not available - or were re-allocated for a “non-enterprise purpose” - your water and sewer rates would go up from 7.7% to 32.8%, according to the recent Midcoast Municipal Service Review. Earlier this year, the Legislative Analyst Office in Sacramento proposed diverting tax money from water and sanitary districts. Fortunately, at least for this year, it seems that proposal is dead. But bad ideas have a history of coming back over and over, until they finally overwhelm opposition.

Nobody wants to see increased water and sewer rates, but we are facing two alternatives: (1) Voluntarily re-allocate property tax funds to recreation uses and raise rates on enterprise operations, or (2) Wait for Sacramento to take those property tax monies away from the local districts and be forced to raise rates on enterprise operations anyway.

In the first alternative, we will have higher rates and local recreation funding; in the second alternative, we will still have higher rates, but the money vanishes for some budget deficit reduction scheme that Sacramento dreams up - not for local uses.

Granada Sanitary District has proposed reorganizing itself as a Community Services District so that it can also provide recreation services. Montara Water and Sanitary District already has authority to provide recreation services, and is considering a proposal to activate those powers. These two districts together, which serve the Midcoast, have about $687,500 per year available from your property taxes.

The remaining $600,000 a year goes to Coastside County Water District, which right now is more interested in consolidating all of the local special districts on the coast. Chances are consolidation would result in so many immediate operational problems that there would be no interest in recreation among a consolidated board focused on building more infrastructure to support development.

What does the community want? If we do nothing, Sacramento will find a way to take the property tax revenue away from enterprise operations eventually.

The fate of AB1991’s successor now hinges on the cooperation of the bill’s opponents in the environmental community, reports Julia Scott in the County Times.  This article does a great job of clarifying the arcane procedures of the state legislature that have made it so confusing to follow the bill’s progress and prospects. This is a must-read.

An amended bill would change the terms of the settlement agreement, which is tantamount to forfeiting the $18 million. It would likely also involve sending the amended language back to the Assembly for another floor vote, and possibly a new hearing by a committee. Before that can happen, however, the bill would need to be heard in a Senate Policy Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee by Aug. 15, followed by a floor vote in the Senate. (The bill has no Senate co-author, but could still be heard if a member volunteers to introduce it).

The last day both chambers can vote on any legislation is Aug. 31.

Paul Mason, legislative director for the Sierra Club in Sacramento, said the city had become much more receptive to negotiating an agreement in recent days when it became clear the bill was not likely to garner enough support in the Senate. AB 1991 is so controversial that every state Senator already knew about it by the time it passed in the Assembly, he said.

“Up until last week, they’ve been pushing forward with a kind of land, air and sea war to put their lobbyists on this — they were thinking, ‘If I ram hard enough, I’ll get what I want.’ And now it’s clear that’s not going to happen,” said Mason. He would not describe the nature of the options under discussion, but said the talks were “initial and well-intentioned.”

Mason suggested that an amended bill could still pass by the end of August.

“Extraordinary things can happen. A lot to this will come down to the city being realistic about what they’re entitled to,” he said. “It should be clear by now that they’re not going to waive all environmental laws.”

Half Moon Bay’s plan to save itself from actually paying its settlement in the Yamagiwa lawsuit is falling apart.

The city’s bill to make the settlement legal—AB1991 -- has been withdrawn from the Senate’s Local Government Committee by author Gene Mullin and is headed to the Rules Committee, probably for big changes. Meanwhile, the city met in closed session with its attorneys on Tuesday, one day after Mullin pulled the bill.  It’s a cinch that they’re considering their options.

It must be dawning on the city council majority that the Senate is not going to let it rewrite the Coastal Act, as well as wetlands and endangered species protections, in closed session with a developer and present it to the legislature as a fait accompli.

AB1991 isn’t going to pass in its present form, but its future form must be decided in public. Chop Keenan has no incentive to cut the city any slack. Half Moon Bay is going to wind up owing Keenan $18 million and owning Beachwood. AB1991’s successor will probably include some kind of financial assistance, financing, or regulatory relief to help the city unload its newly-acquired white elephant.  It’s poetic justice that the value of that piece of coastal scrubland depends on the very people the city has vilified and ignored in the settlement process.

Whatever the city does on the property will have to be approved by the Coastal Commission, whom the city council majority have called liars.

And it will have to be consistent with state environmental laws. Senator Leland Yee, whose district is most affected by this bill, has insisted that any bill be vetted by environmental committee staff and that it not trash any of our state’s environmental laws.

The city council majority has the opportunity to undo a lot of the damage this settlement and AB1991 have done to our sense of community. They need to take responsibility for the mess the settlement has created. They must come up with a compromise that meets the needs of the stakeholders they’ve been trying to steamroll. They need to work with the people they’ve been slandering, disparaging, or simply ignoring. They need to acknowledge they’ve wasted about a million dollars on lawyers and lobbyists to get a result they could have achieved with a little openness and community spirit. And they need to do all this in public.

It’s debatable whether Tuesday’s closed session was even legal under the Brown Act, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. It should be the last closed session the city has on this matter.

Coastal Commissioner Steve Blank is a Democrat appointed to the commission by Governor Schwarzenegger, reports the Capitol Weekly. He opposed the toll road through a state park—a position that cost Clint Eastwood and Bobby Shriver, the governor’s brother in law, their seats on the State Parks Commission. He’s also a Coastsider, with a home across Highway 1 from Año Nuevo.

“The biggest misperception is that nobody understands that it’s zoning. It’s not that you’ve lost property rights, it’s just that zoning differs (in the coastal zone). It’s unlike any other place in the world. This is because 75 percent of the population lives within 25 miles of the coast, but it is still among the most pristine coasts in the world,” Blank said. “You share the coast with 38 million people.”

Using his own money—and before he had a lot of it—he purchased land from the state conservancy by mortgaging his home, and has since placed protections on that land, such as leasing it back to sustainable farmers of $1 a year. “His personal goal is to protect the land and keep it wild, but accessible to visitors so they can appreciate it and learn from it,” said Kassy Perry, a media consultant who has worked with Blank.

He and his wife –a Stanford business professor and who specializes in nonprofits—also donated $500,000 to the state-of-the-art Marine Education Center at Año Nuevo. The $3.2 million facility opened this month with a symbolic “kelp cutting” ceremony with donors and state officials that included state parks director Ruth Coleman, who lauded Blank. Without Blank’s “determination, vision and cash, this center would still be a dream trapped in the middle of two historic, but dilapidated barns.”

Supervisor Rich Gordon will be on the Coastside this Thursday, June 26 from 10am to noon at the Moss Beach Substation.

The Senate Local Government Committee hearing for AB1991, scheduled for Wednesday, has been delayed until Wednesday, June 25. This could be a significant inconvenience for all Coastsiders and others who made time to attend the hearing in Sacramento.

Half Moon Bay’s representative for AB1991, Lanny Davis, has joined the staff of Fox News, reports Alex Koppelman in Salon.

Davis has been trending Fox News’ way for some time now, first as a supporter of Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman during his reelection fight in 2006 and then as a Clinton surrogate this year. During one appearance he made on the network in May, under prompting from conservative radio host Laura Ingraham about allegations of bias against Clinton, Davis said he “now know[s] what it feels like to be a Republican” and added that, in his view, Fox was the most balanced of the cable networks. Separately, Davis told the Politico’s Michael Calderone that one appearance he made on rival CNN was “the worst experience I ever had on television.”

And Davis fits with the general pattern of Democratic guests on FNC. In an article I wrote last year about so-called Fox News Democrats, who often seem to be picked by the network to make Democrats look bad, I discussed Davis’ general attitude on the network, where he often appeared as what I termed an “enabler.” “This category of guest”, I noted, “is ‘on-screen to prove to viewers that even Democrats agree that a radical left wing dominates the Democratic Party, not to mention the media.’” Davis was a prime example of this phenomenon.

NOTE: You can see Lanny’s famous performance on Fox over at Talking Points Memo.

The city of Half Moon Bay has received $5 million from the Association of Bay Area Governments insurance pool.

Although the city says at least six times in the three-paragraph release that the money will go toward its litigation expenses, this is $5 million that the city did not have before.

Since the city has already budgeted and spent the money for past litigation, this $5 million could be applied to the $18 million settlement with developer Charles “Chop” Keenan, significantly reducing the amount they would have to borrow.

Here’s the release:

Half Moon Bay Mayor and ABAG Announce Settlement of Beachwood Litigation Insurance Claim

Payment will Reimburse City for 10 Years of Litigation Expenses

HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Half Moon Bay Mayor Bonnie McClung and the risk sharing pool to which the City belongs, the Association of Bay Area Governments Pooled Liability Assurance Network (ABAG PLAN), announced today that they had reached an agreement under which ABAG PLAN would pay the City $5 million to reimburse it for expenses incurred during 10 years of litigation over the Beachwood property. The City expects that the $5 million will fund most of the litigation costs that it has already incurred or anticipated.

“We appreciate the decision by ABAG PLAN to pay the City the entire $5 million under our coverage, which covers the incurred and anticipated litigation costs related to Beachwood. This money will be used to reimburse the City for the almost $5 million in total legal and administrative costs of the litigation over a period of more than 10 years, but will not reach the $18 million that will be owed should AB 1991 fail,” said Mayor McClung. The $5 million is the entire coverage available from ABAG PLAN.

AB 1991 passed the California Assembly 46-18 on May 28th and will be heard by the California Senate Local Government Committee on June 18th.