Comments by Barry Parr

CCF asks Coastal Commission 25 questions

Steve:  I’m talking about new home construction, not home sales.

Mike & Ray: I mentioned Lesley Gardens as the reason for the growth surge in my story.  I believe that certain parts of the city (downtown?) are exempt from the 1% limit as well.

Clearly, Lesley Gardens doesn’t place as much burden on the Coastside as a subdivision, especially in terms of cars or land use. But, as you can see from its parking lot, it is not impact-free.

I have always maintained that affordable housing should be allocated a portion of the 1% and not allowed to slop over as an exception.

My point is that we shouldn’t be speaking of the 1% growth limit as if it’s some sort of hard limit. It isn’t.

CCF asks Coastal Commission 25 questions

Half Moon Bay grew at 2.6% in 2004, mainly due to exceptions made by the city.  We don’t know what it was in 2005.

http://coastsider.com/comments/678_0_1_0_C/

CCF asks Coastal Commission 25 questions

I did get a request from Ken to replace one comment with another a couple of hours after the first one had been posted.  I didn’t read either the new or the old comment too closely, so I don’t know what the differences were. Generally, I’ve got better things to do than edit everyone’s posts, so lets not make this a habit.

Sounds like Ken thought better what he wrote, which was a weak reference to “good ol’ Charlie Brown”. Good for him.

The goal here is enlightening discussion, not scoring points.  Please keep that in mind.

CCF asks Coastal Commission 25 questions

I think the definitive piece so far on problems with the bypass is Mike Ferreira’s three-part piece on Coastsider.

CCF has Coastsider’s permission to reprint that piece (with credit) on their site in the interest of furthering their educational mission.  I’m sure Mike won’t object.

David Gorn resigns from HMB City Council

(a) It’s intended for a city park, not for open space, and (b) POST buys land for resale, not to hold it.

MROSD soliciting comments on draft Good Neighbor Policy for one more week

Do you have any comments on the content of the policy itself?

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

Mark knows a lot about coastal issues and the Coastal Commission in particular.  He’s also got a great fund of knowledge about what has worked and not worked in other coastal communities. I’d like to see more contributions from him on the site. I think we’d all learn something.

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

Terry:

I’m surprised you’ve taken it upon yourself (a) define my guest list and (b) challenge my guests as to whether they meet your standards.

But it speaks volumes about your state of mind when you say that Coastsider is for: “folk that ... want to help the folk that live on the coast to develop this resource for us and visitors.”

...but you don’t include those who want to help us *preserve* this “resource”.

But enough about you, let’s talk about me.  Coastsider is for anyone who cares enough about this place to read what I have to write you about it. And if they care that much, I’m interested in their opinion.

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

We don’t need “comprehensive community based planning” to tell us we need school buses.

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

It’s likely the bypass will exacerbate the already godawful weekend traffic problem at Surfers beach, cutting the Coastside in half.  I suppose that would benefit the merchants in Linda Mar, but it’s no solution to weekend traffic. Also, keep in mind that the tunnel is going to greatly improve tourist access to the Coastside on the weekend.

It’s not clear to me how the bypass would reduce traffic accidents. By mixing through-traffic with residential areas along the bypass, I think you stand a pretty decent chance of increasing the number of pedestrian fatalities per mile driven.

The traffic light at Terrace will solve the problem of east/west access, at no cost to the taxpayers. It’s a much lighter-weight solution to the problem you describe. I’ve been neutral on the light for ever, but I’m beginning to see it as a solution to this problem as well as others.

Projects like this are usually undertaken with no thought to unintended consequences. I think that’s what we’re getting from the bypass promoters.

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

Actually, the only reason the bypass is even on the table is because of the Slide crisis, which has now dwindled to an hour or so of commute time in the morning. And I believe that if the school board committed itself to offering reliable busing for the school year beginning in September, as well as made permanent its temporary schedule changes, the morning commute problem would be significantly better in the fall, especially after the Slide is repaired.

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

Ray:

If someone criticizes your idea as being illegal, unaffordable, offensive to the senses and unlikely to solve the problem, the correct response is to defend your idea. Not to say, “Can you do any better?”

There is also already one proposal for solving the traffic problem on the table that has been ignored by CCF:  school busing.  There are others, but that’s not the point.

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

I should have been more explicit. What I meant to say was that it’s arguable that the bypass will improve commute traffic, rather than simply moving the bottleneck.

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

Ray says that “ the community is sick and tired of things never improving”.  I don’t think it has been demonstrated that the bypass would improve the community. A park would improve the community. A new library would improve the community. More stores and services for locals in downtown HMB, El Granada, Montara, Moss Beach would improve the community. More trails would improve the community.  The new middle school at the Cunha site will improve the community. These are improvements that we can all agree on. 

It’s specious to say that “a select few that are against any sort of improvements” for selfish reasons. The question is whether the bypass is an improvement.

Coastal Commission alerts HMB to problems with Foothill Bypass

Charlie:

There’s no question school traffic is big part of our morning commute.  The school board has paid lip service to solving the problem by putting $12,500 into a study of transportation issues. But it has said clearly and consistently that it has no intention of resuming bus service.

But, the following question is still nagging me:  Why is anyone promoting a $40,000,000 bypass (which many smart people don’t think will be legal or effective) as a solution to our traffic problems, when there are more economical, effective, environmentally responsible, and community-oriented solutions?

Video: How is business?

I can see both sides on this one. I live in Montara and know difficult the commute can be.

But I also know that merchants downtown were struggling before the Slide went out. And with the new light schedules there have been days when the traffic has been backed up on Main from Highway 92 to Kelly St. As horrible as the commute has been, I know there are people whose livelihoods are at stake on Main Street.

We should be pulling together in this crisis.

Measure S loses with 61% of the vote

I want respond to the following comment about liberals: “I don’t trust liberals anymore.  They are so emotional...and they have no data.  They just attack people personally.”

Speaking as a moderate who finds himself leaning left just to retain his sanity, I find this statement to be the opposite of my experience these days.

The congressional debates on the definition of marriage and the “death tax” are two excellent examples in just the last 48 hours of how the right has abandoned reason for appeals to emotions.  And don’t get me started about their systematic attack on science. But I think it might be a good idea to let the conservatives speak for themselves on this matter:

“In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’

-- Ron Suskind, “Without a Doubt”, New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004

[I’m going to exercise moderator’s prerogative an not let this turn into a thread about the merits of right vs left.  You all know what you think and no one is going to be persuaded here. I’m also happy to stipulate that the Democrats (many of whom were liberal) did all kinds of stupid and corrupt things when they ran the country.]

Measure S loses with 61% of the vote

Jonathan: 

Thanks for asking folks to be reasonable.  I’ve been trying to get folks to tone their posts down behind the scenes without stifling the conversations.  It would help a lot if everyone would keep this less personal.

Measure S loses with 61% of the vote

I agree with Jonathan that the Measure S folks didn’t get out the vote.

However, their campaign was both professional and heartfelt.  They had the support of 100% of the public figures in the community, which is an astonishing consensus. What happened?

Based on Ken’s experience, which rings true for me, the responsibility for this failure has to be laid at the feet of the school board. It’s clear that a significant portion community has been unable to forgive the board’s failure to build a middle school.  Then there’s the lack of school buses, which would have been a minor issue but for our current traffic crisis.

So, here’s the bonus question:  Why is a member of the school board promoting a $40 million (or whatever) bypass to “solve” a traffic problem that is clearly exacerbated by the board’s unwillingness to address transportation? The problem is not getting cars more efficiently to a new bottleneck on Highway 92. One big piece of the problem is that school traffic is contributing to the mess that is our morning commute. And that’s only one reason that the board’s failure on transportation is so damning.

Albertsons closing in HMB

When I talked to Albertsons yesterday, I asked if they owned or leased the store. It’s leased from the shopping center owner. The person I talked to didn’t know who that was. I’m sure somebody reading this thread does, however.

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