Comments by Leonard Woren

Coastal Commission approves MWSD public works plan

Ken, you are comparing tangerines with rotten apples.  A private industry company in a government-enforced monopoly position cannot be compared to a government agency.  CUCC/Cal-Am was never a free market scenario.  Regulation of such companies is a farce.  A free market would require competition.  Do you think that Comcast’s rates would be as high and their service as bad if there was another cable company to turn to for service if you’re unhappy with Comcast?  Do you think that we would have 8 hour electric outages every time the wind blows when the ground is wet if PG&E had competition for local service?  Of course government can always do it better than a private company which is shielded by the government from competition and only lip service is paid to regulation.  This is not to say that government can always do things better.  Do I have to say CalTrans vs C.C. Myer?  Government can only do things better when comparing to a private company that has no competition.

I believe in competition.  If competition is not going to be allowed, say for sewer/water/gas/electric/cable, then the only reasonable scenario is a government agency.  I still want to hear a good reason why there’s no competition allowed for electric, local phone, cable.  A few decades ago when policy was changed to allow competition in long-distance phone calling, prices dropped like a rock.

Interesting that satellite TV, with higher infrastructure costs but with competition, has better service and I think lower rates than the “regulated” Comcast monopoly.

Coastsider endorses John Moseley for school board

While I understand why Barry has taken the position that he has, I don’t agree with it.  Here’s why.  First let’s assume that everyone votes for John Mosely—doing so is a no-brainer.  Then if you agree that Charlie Gardner is not an appropriate school board member, the arithmetic of 3 candidates for two seats is that if you vote only for Mosely, clearly he’ll win and we have to analyze what happens with the other seat.  Charlie is obviously popular for some reason, so Ken is the underdog from the word “go”.  The only way to get Charlie off the school board is for everyone who agrees that he shouldn’t be there to vote for both John and Ken.

Even if Ken is arguably a gadfly, I’m still convinced that he cares more about the schools than most of the school board members in the 14 years I’ve lived here.  Most of them were/are more interested in pushing development than in running a good school system.

And yes, (from what I read) Ken’s web stunt was tacky.  Nobody’s perfect.  Vote for John and Ken if you want to have any hope of the school board getting out of pro-development politics in order to focus on improving the schools.

Letter: MWSD not affected by county financial fiasco

My understanding is that county pooled funds are totally separate from the State LAIF.  However, because GSD does not use it, I know essentially nothing about the SMC pool.  But I don’t think it’s referred to as LAIF—I’ve never heard that.

Letter: MWSD not affected by county financial fiasco

Vince, your first question is a non-sequitur.  LAIF is the Local Agency Investment Fund, a pooled investment account managed by the State of California.  There is only one LAIF for all California entities which choose to use it.  I think there are billions in LAIF.

GSD has our own treasurer, but staff does the work.  The Treasurer basically reviews the work and signs some authorizations.

Letter: MWSD not affected by county financial fiasco

All of Paul’s comments regarding MWSD are equally applicable to GSD, since GSD’s reserves also are in LAIF.  GSD’s near-term operational money is in a local branch of a big bank.

Regarding the County Fund, Barry asked “Were there any red flags?” Um, maybe the word “County”?

Perhaps the districts using the County Treasurer should investigate whether they, like the sanitary districts, are allowed to appoint their own Treasurer and manage their own money.

Film Society screens three humorous polical documentaries, Friday

I saw “Amazing” on PBS a while back.  It’s a fun film and a great argument for disbanding CalTrans and contracting everything.  Too bad C.C. Myers doesn’t do tunnels… it would be finished by now.

If the other two films are anything at all like “Amazing”, this is a must-see film night.

Letter: Just a thought

Way back, while the Airport Master Plan Update was being discussed, MCC had an Airport Committee.  I attended most or all of the meetings and learned a lot about this airport.  (And by the way Steve, a few people who bought houses in MB have in fact claimed that they didn’t know there was an airport there.  Kind of hard to miss...)

Extending the runway will not require any paving—just a can of paint and an administrative order.  This airport is 5,000’ long, but has “displaced thresholds.” Those are simply a line across the runway indicating part of the pavement which is normally not allowed to be used.  I don’t remember the precise length, but it’s in the ball park of 730 feet at each end, making the usable runway length approximately 3,500 feet.  There are displaced thresholds at each end because the runway is used in one direction ("30") when the wind is blowing in the normal direction and it’s used in the other direction ("12") when the wind is blowing the other direction, which around here is 10% of the time.

There was and may still be a proposal to eliminate the displaced thresholds, allowing use of the full 5,000 feet of existing concrete.  This would allow larger, heavier, and therefore noisier plans to use this airport.  It will bring more noise closer to Moss Beach Residents, and enlarge the “Airport Overlay” ("AO") zone in Princeton which restricts development.

In the referenced past discussions, some Moss Beach residents wanted to shift the displaced thresholds south to get the noise away from Moss Beach, which would negatively impact development potential in Princeton.  More than a few Princeton property owners wanted to shift the thresholds north to allow more development in Princeton.  These proposals would also changed the patterns, causing impacts on El Granada, east Moss Beach, and maybe even Montara.  If I recall, the Visual Flight Rules approach approaches the 30 runway at a 90 angle from the ocean, crossing the runway, flying a 3/4 circle over Rancho Corral de Tierra and part of El Granada to get to north-bound straight in approach.  Shifting the displaced thresholds in either direction will have a negative impact on a significant part of El Granada in addition to other areas that I’ve already described.  **I propose that the only reasonable compromise is to do nothing, keeping the displaced thresholds as they are today.**

Footnote:  Instrument approaches have been allowed for years if the plane has the right equipment and the pilot is appropriately certified.  However, when they’re down to some few hundred feet (I forget the actual altitude), if they can’t see the runway I believe that they **must** do a “missed approach” and go land elsewhere.  There was talk of installing more instrumentation but I’ve forgotten the details and I think there wasn’t enough demand to justify the expense.  Be aware that as traffic increases, demand could increase to where it’s economically viable to install the equipment.

HMB High’s dropout rate soars under new reporting system

I’m not exactly in the habit of saying anything good about CUSD, but the way that I read Jonathan’s charts, under the new reporting method CUSD’s dropout rate is the same percentage as San Mateo County, and CUSD’s dropout rate is a lower percentage than California’s.  Previously CUSD’s under-reporting was more severe than the other groupings.  Am I missing something?

In any case, all of the dropout rates shown under the new reporting system are appallingly high.  If I had to guess, I’d guess that the actual dropout rate from my (public) high school class of 500 was probably near zero.

Opinion: “Major Restructuring” comes to Cunha Middle School

Only if they can find one who’s pro-maximum-growth, since clearly nothing else has mattered to the CUSD board for at least a decade and a half.

Big Sur homeowners say maritime chaparral protection endangers their homes

I suppose that some people are going to start blaming lightning and dry weather on environmental protection policies.

Build in wildland areas, expect wildland fires.  Why is that such a difficult concept?  People who want to live in those areas need to have houses which are constructed in a manner that they will withstand an encroaching wildland fire.  Obviously the “clear a 100 foot buffer” isn’t always sufficient protection, and “clear a 10 mile buffer” isn’t going to fly.

Some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s there was a devastating fire in an urban area in Orange County.  Everything burned to the ground for many blocks in all directions, except one small embedded subdivision where every house was intact.  Why?  Those houses in that subdivision had Spanish tile roofs.  It was impressive to see from the air—one few-block area of intact houses surrounded on all sides by a huge totally destroyed area, Twilight Zone style.

If I built a house for myself in a wildland fire-prone area, it would have a brick exterior with a tile roof.

Letter: Fourth of July Spy

Ok, John, for bonus points, without looking it up, who was the [first president of the United States][2]?  Hint:  it wasn’t George Washington.

[2]: http://www.marshallhall.org/hanson.html

Letter: Fourth of July Spy

The name of the holiday is ”Independence Day”, not ”July 4”.  It’s depressing how many people don’t know that.  Of course, even fewer can name more than one or two of the protections enumerated in the Bill of Rights.  Not that it matters, since the so-called “USA Patriot Act” effectively repealed the Bill of Rights.  The issue mentioned above by Tim Payne is another part of this attack on the Constitution.

Letter: Alternatives to July 4th fireworks?

What would the 2 sides be in a 2008 tug-of-war?

Just the facts: Where’s the water for CCWD?

Every new CCWD customer increases the water cost for all existing CCWD customers.  This is simple arithmetic, which “engineer” Jim Larimer denies.

The following is an email that I posted to the Midcoast-L discussion list on February 18 of this year.

Something that I mentioned at a CCWD board meeting, which was strongly denied by the CCWD directors, is that every new CCWD customer increases costs for every existing CCWD customer.

It’s really simple.  So simple that a PhD can’t understand it.

Looking only at the cost of water, not the system cost, a CCWD customer’s unit cost of water is a weighted average of the cost of a unit of local water and the cost of a unit of imported Hetch Hetchy water.  CCWD has repeatedly stated that Hetch Hetchy water costs more than local water (that’s a no-brainer), so CCWD uses all the available local water first and then supplements it with Hetch Hetchy water. That’s reasonable.

T = total units of water served by CCWD
L = units of local water
H = units of imported (Hetch-Hetchy) water
T = L + H
increase T by n while holding L fixed:
T+n = L + (H + n)

Since L is fixed, every increase in T must be met by a corresponding increase in H.

I don’t have actual numbers, so I’ll just make some up for illustrative purposes.  Given the underlying premises, the only difference between what I’m presenting below and reality is the actual $ amounts.  The concept holds.

Assumptions for illustrative example, since I tried to do this with variables and it got too complicated.  It’s been too long since I was a math major…

cost of 1 unit of L = $1.
cost of 1 unit of H = $2.
units of L served = 500,000
units of H served = 1,000,000

Current total water cost = $500,000 + $2,000,000 = $2,500,000.
Current unit cost = $2,500,000 / 1,500,000 = $1.66/unit.

Now let’s add some customers to the system, holding all other numbers constant:

units of H served = 2,000,000 in the future.
Future total water cost = $500,000 + $4,000,000 = $4,500,000.
Future unit cost = $4,500,000 / 2,500,000 = $1.80/unit.

The difference seems small.  But these are just discussion point numbers; someone should plug in actual values into these equations. Once that’s done, then you can compute the actual dollar increase for an average customer for every new customer added to the system.

Regardless, my fundamental point is valid:  every new house that’s built increases water costs for every existing customer.  And the scenario will be worse than I’ve painted it due to the cost of Hetch-Hetchy water increasing at a much faster rate than local in order to pay for the system rebuild.

It should now be clear what is the basis of Carl’s repeated comment about nature’s “free subsidy”—it’s the difference in price/unit between local and imported water.

Opinion: $1,287,500 for recreation: use it or lose it!

Charlie, you have not addressed the fact that we can either shift the property tax money now and raise rates or lose the property tax money and raise rates.  I’m still waiting to hear a cogent argument for not doing the shift.

Also, you mentioned development in a PUD, I responded that there hasn’t been any, and you responded “The house across the street from me was developed on an infill lot and had to put in a well (not enough water).” If I recall, you live in Montara.  I’m not aware of any PUD zoning in Montara.  Infill of an ancient subdivision is not at all related to PUD zoning.

Charlie wrote “There is no sense in trying to take on recreation as well, you have enough on your plate.” First of all, GSD is doing quite well.  (I know that some naysayers think otherwise, but that discussion should go in a separate thread.) I’m simply amused by the people who think that GSD (or MWSD) can’t do more than one thing well.  There are many many government agencies which handle multiple local municipal functions.  They’re called cities., although there are quite a number of CSDs doing multiple things.  I’m dumbfounded at the idea espoused by a few here that a city can juggle multiple priorities and do them properly but a special district can’t.  There is simply no basis or justification for that claim—it’s just rhetoric to justify a certain government structure that those people want to push.

Opinion: $1,287,500 for recreation: use it or lose it!

Charlie, pardon me, but what the heck are you talking about?  Please identify where on the coastside anything zoned PUD has been developed in recent memory, if ever.  And on a well?

And thank you for your statement

If consolidation undermines your version of “local control” maybe its time for other locals to control.

You have finally come out in the open with what I’ve been saying all along:  Most of the coastsiders pushing consolidation are simply unhappy with the current GSD and MWSD boards and think that they will be able to get themselves elected to the consolidated board(s).

Here’s an exercise left to the reader for the moment:  How many pro-consolidation people in the unincorporated Midcoast were unsuccessful candidates for local office?  (An easier question is how many anti-consolidation people are current or former elected officials?  Hint:  lots.)

There is one consolidation that I’d readily support:  Incorporation of a new coastside city stretching from Medio Creek in the south to basically 1st street on the north edge of Montara.  That consolidation could easily include rolling up GSD and MWSD into the new city.  But oddly enough (or not!), nearly all of the pro-consolidation people seem to be against that version of consolidation and local control.

Opinion: $1,287,500 for recreation: use it or lose it!

Charlie’s comment completely sidesteps the “move it or lose it” issue which Paul described.  The Legislature has been explicit that they are going to keep trying to steal our local property tax money until they succeed.

There are only two choices:  either we do nothing, lose the local property tax money, and raise sewer rates in GSD and sewer and water rates in MWSD, or we shift the tax money over to the desperately needed parks and recreation services and raise the sewer and water rates.

Either way, the sewer and water rates will go up by the same amount.  That’s unstoppable.  There is no third possibility, even though Charlie tries to pretend that there is.  But if we act quickly we could hold on to the local property tax money by shifting it to parks and recreation services in GSD and MWSD.

Charlie’s suggestion to keep using the MWSD property tax money to subsidize water and water infrastructure simply cannot be maintained much longer due to the Legislature’s stated intent.

For Charlie, it’s obviously more important to push the over-development group’s goal of undermining local control via consolidation than to keep a large amount of money local and use it to providing a desperately needed service.

And by the way, shifting the property tax money as suggested does not in any way preclude consolidation in the future.

Landowners sue HMB, saying Oak Avenue Park is on their property

Per State Law, the City Council can hire and fire **only**:

- The City Manager
- The City Attorney
- The Police Chief (I think)

Hiring and firing of any other employees who report to the above 3 people is the sole province of those 3.

Another example:  at SAM, the Board has authority over only the General Manager and Counsel.

The only way that a City Council is allowed to handle obstinate staff is to tell the City Manager to deal with it.  So blaming any Council members for staff-caused problems is problematic at best.

Over the years I’ve become aware (mostly hearsay, but not all hearsay) of a number of incidents of HMB staff hiding information which should have been brought to the Council.

Another bill to exempt developer from the law submitted to Assembly

Steve, the “weeds” that you hate are where they are due to the wetlands.  Transplanting them won’t change the current location from being wetlands.  And they might not survive in a place that isn’t wetlands.  Kind of the whole point—wetlands are special places.

Letter: Why I support Richard Holober for State Assembly

John, doesn’t Richard benefit from Nadia’s anti-environment work simply because California is a community property state?

I’m still in a quandary over who to vote for.  Aside from what’s already been mentioned above, Richard also made a big point about his history with labor, particularly construction trades unions.  By and large, their only concern is maximizing how much is built in order to maximize jobs.

Kathryn, is Gina still supporting AB 1991?

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