Comments by Leonard Woren

$2 million grant to help Pescadero investigate new sewer system

I have a vague recollection of there being talk of a Pescadero sewer system maybe 8 years ago, +/- 2.  It might be beneficial to look into that and find out what happened back then.

Of course this will annoy some people, but let’s review what’s required to fuel excessive growth:

1. Water
2. Sewer
3. Roads

I don’t think that 3 is a problem in Pescadero.  Yet.

2 is currently a show stopper, but clearly that could change.

I’m unclear on the status of water; isn’t there a public water system but with restricted capacity?  Of course, if wells can be done then water isn’t a problem.

The growth jump in the Midcoast was a direct consequence of the over-expansion of the sewer plant, since people then discovered how easy it is to use a well to build a house.

Let’s review the Land Use Plan (1978, but timeless):
(LUP text in next posting, due to length restriction)

$2 million grant to help Pescadero investigate new sewer system

In the linked article is this gem:  Pescadero is one of several rural Coastside towns to rely exclusively on septic systems. Others include La Honda, Woodside, Portola Valley and the entire Midcoast north of Half Moon Bay.

I have emailed the author and requested that a correction be printed.  Do I even have to state here that most of the Midcoast is served by the Sewer Authority Midcoastside?  Only the few properties in the rural areas can’t get sewer service.

“"Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.” —Erwin Knoll, on ifitsinthepress.com

What does Nimby really mean?

How about we stick to the “over-developer” label? 

Bob did succeed in his intent to bring humor to the subject.  I’m not too convinced that the smiley on Ray’s post mitigates anything.

Photo: Surfing at Kelp Cove

I’m not going spend my time tracking down references for the following, but it’s solidly documented science that:
1. riprap always causes loss of the beach
2. riprap always increases the erosion rate at one end at least, sometimes (often?) both ends
3. riprap (almost?) always fails eventually

A now-retired geologist for USGS in Menlo Park spent decades documenting erosion of the San Mateo County coast.  The three numbered statements above are approximately his statements.

In geologic time, the San Mateo coast was literally “born yesterday”.  It’s very soft and erodes very fast.  The fact that there are some people with enough money, stupidity, greed, selfishness (choose up to 4) to build too close to the ocean doesn’t mean that it’s ok to allow them to steal the beach from millions of people in order to temporarily protect a structure which never should have been built in the first place.

I don’t remember the numbers but it’s been computed that at the current rate of coast armoring in California (~10% today), in something like 100 years all 1100 miles of California’s coast would be armored and there will be no beaches.

It sounds really harsh and maybe it is, but if your house falls into the ocean or slides down a hillside, that’s just nature’s way of telling you that it didn’t belong there in the first place.

When I was looking to buy a house in El Granada, there was one that I really liked but it was stapled to the side of the road on basically a cliff.  I want solid dirt under my house.  For some silly reason, I think it’s more important to have my house stay put than it is to (temporarily) have a nice view.  And I do appreciate nice views and wish I had one.  But if you GAVE ME a house on cliff, no matter how great the view is, I’d sell the property and buy in a safer location.

Is Coastsider Orwellian?

My understanding at the time was that the photos went to the CCC’s code enforcement officer because the violation was regarding a previous settlement with the Coastal Commission, and that the local agency (I don’t know if the property is within the city of HMB or is County) was not involved in the original enforcement action that was being violated.

SM County has an explicit policy (which is supposedly being re-evaluated) that code enforcement takes no action except in response to complaints from citizens.

I don’t know who “Mr. C” is, but please go back and re-read my recital of a couple of incidents I had, and then consider whether Mr. C might also have had experience being intimidated for simply taking photos.

Terry wrote Why not some local folk instead of a staffer at a State agency? Why not talk with the property owner? Well, when has the County ever enforced its own environmental laws?  It’s completely pointless to contact San Mateo County regarding violation of environmental law.  (On the other hand, if you build a 5’1” fence and someone complains, watch out.) As to talking with the property owner, I subsequently did talk to him and he took me on a tour of the property and explained some of the various disagreements he had with the CCC.  The problem is that he believes that he has done nothing wrong, and while I didn’t understand all of the issues because I only heard his side of them, and I just can’t believe that CCC code enforcement would be so totally wrong about multiple issues.  I suspect that an attitude adjustment on his part could go a long way towards resolution of his problems with the CCC.  In particular this means that he’s going to have to recognize that he in fact did do some illegal, environmentally damaging things.

There’s a parcel in the Montecito Riparian Corridor in El Granada which was illegally cleared by the builder/owner.  I heard that it’s one of the very few parcels that the County has declared unbuildable, yet they would not stop him from cutting the willlows down to bare dirt, after multiple complaints from the neighbors, which included photos.  All the County ever did is ask him to stop.  He simply ignored them and continued.  As to talking to him, that would have been pointless.  For example, he was parked in a “no parking, fire lane” area.  When this was pointed out to the Sheriff deputies there, he took a crowbar and removed the sign and threw it in his truck.  The Deputies simply left.

Is Coastsider Orwellian?

Ok, people, let’s stop beating around the bush. 
Terry Gossett doesn’t like “anonymous canaries” for one reason and one reason only:  people doing illegal things on their property have a much harder time intimidating/bullying the canaries when they’re anonymous.

I guess it’s time for me to publicly relate a certain incident from a number of years ago.  I was asked by another activist who didn’t have a camera to go take pictures of some illegal activities and send them to the Coastal Commission’s code enforcement officer.  The large property is along SR 1, and I was very careful to stay on the public right of way while taking pictures.  As I was leaving, the property owner came out with a disposable camera, did his best to intimidate me without actually threatening me, took pictures of me and my car (parked on the OTHER side of the highway), and then apparently called a certain less-than-ethical HMB police officer.  When I got home there was an intimidating message on my answering machine from that officer.  I had done nothing wrong and he knew it.  This was an abuse of authority and perhaps an illegal use of his access to vehicle registrations.  By the way, that officer seems to have a reputation for this type of stunt—the answering machine message was fuzzy and it was difficult to hear his name exactly.  I spoke to a knowledge person in HMB, whose response was “oh yeah, don’t worry about it; (name) does that all the time.”

After getting a much more threatening phone call from another local developer whose property I had taken pictures of, I came up with this:

Q:  What is a developer’s worst nightmare?
A:  An environmentalist with a camera.

Is Coastsider Orwellian?

Well this has been educational.  First I learned a lot about George Orwell from the link to the Wikipedia article.  Then I checked Wikipedia for “doublespeak” and surprisingly found out that the word does not appear in Orwell’s “1984”.

Is it doublespeak to claim that a replacement of a 10” line with a 16” line is not an expansion” Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak and decide for yourself.  Jim Larimer’s calling it “infrastructure renewal” perfectly fits the Wikipedia definition of Doublespeak—reference for example the part about calling mass firings by various other more innocuous names.

(Donning my asbestos suit now.)

Is Coastsider Orwellian?

I recall watching a CCWD meeting where Director Larimer asked Counsel “What happens if we just ignore the [CCC] conditions [placed on the pipeline expansion]?” His line of questioning was exploring the possibility of claiming that CCWD agreed to the conditions under duress, and therefore didn’t have to abide by them.

Letter:  Wither the LCP?

Not surprisingly, you have entirely missed my point.  The reason that I didn’t name Mike is that the particular nominee was irrelevant at the time and is irrelevant to my point now.  The tradition is (was!) that councilmembers rubber-stamp each other’s nominations.  Violation of that tradition is what was polarizing.  You should review the video of that and watch Grady’s surprise at having his nominee rejected.  As to whether Grady thinks it was a good idea, you’ll have to ask him.

Also, what happened to the other negotiated agreement that the majority would get one of the at-large seats and the minority would get the other?  I guess a guaranteed 4:3 majority on the Commission just wasn’t good enough.

Oh, and by the way, don’t forget to provide the list of changes that have been made in the name of “open/transparent government practices”.

Letter:  Wither the LCP?

“End polarization”?  What about the tradition of approving a councilmember’s nominee to the Planning Commission, which was violated by McClung not voting for Jim Grady’s nominee?  That “no” vote was more polarizing than anything else I can recall seeing the HMB City Council do in the 12 years that I’ve been here.

Just out of curiousity, could someone (Joel?) list the changes that have been made in the name of “open/transparent government practices”?

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

Terry writes ”It is simply not clear to me why MWSD continues to run our water system in isolation from our neighbors, with little apparent interest in consolidation or integration,”.

I don’t follow MWSD affairs very closely since by and large it’s not my concern, but I’m going to give short answers to Terry’s comment.

1) A pipeline from MWSD to NCCWD would be very expensive.  This has been mentioned at multiple MWSD board meetings.  I don’t remember the cost of building a new water pipeline, but I’m sure it’s more than small sewer mains which cost at least $150/foot.  I’ll let Terry look up the distance and the actual cost and do the simple arithmetic.  After he has an actual dollar number, he can then explain where the money will come from.

2) CCWD can’t legally sell Hetch Hetchy water outside of the district, and MWSD can’t join the H H system because it’s already over-subscribed.

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

Mike, thanks for the constructive criticism.  I try to remember that, but as you see, sometimes I forget.  You wrote ”That�s an absolutist statement that Mr. Gossett can easily refute by showing knowledge of something, anything, regarding sanitary districts.” Amusingly enough, he hasn’t bothered to attempt even that minimal level.  Nor do I expect that he will.

Notice that we see from Terry’s followup that he is still using only vague generalities, never providing any actual numbers to support his unsupportable claims.

Terry wrote ”Another possible cost saving of consolidation might include consolidation of office space, and the very valuable coastside property on which MWSD could be sold or made into a park.” Again, Terry supplies no numbers.  I believe that MWSD’s office building is completely filled by their existing staff, so where would the additional staff go?  And while the suggestion of a park there sounds good, there are reasons that I won’t go into regarding why it would be very difficult/expensive to do so.

As to the “best interest” statement that Terry quotes without reference, it’s from the SAM Joint Powers Authority Agreement which created SAM.  SAM was a shotgun wedding, and describing all the politics involved is a book-sized discussion.  Regardless, since operational consolidation has been achieved via SAM, I don’t understand how there is any further benefit from actual consolidation of the districts.  So, Terry, that’s why I keep asking for actual numbers which you continue to avoid supplying.

As to how well the consolidation (SAM) is working, I should just leave it at “shotgun wedding.” The baby is fine; the parents generally manage to speak to each other civilly.  Please don’t mischaracterize my previous posting as “being happy with the consolidation (SAM).” I’m simply pointing out that any cost savings through consolidation have already taken place.

As for any lessons from SAM being applicable to the water districts, I don’t see how.  Consolidation of water treatment plants wouldn’t make sense.  If it did, wouldn’t CCWD consolidate their two treatment plants?  District consolidation wouldn’t result in any reduction of the number of field personnel or treatment plant personnel, and office staff workload is primarily based on the number of customers, which wouldn’t change.  So again, Terry, if you think that consolidation would provide benefits, please state specifics.

Terry wrote: ”Regarding your comments on costs I believe that it may be misleading to not include the considerable costs on each of our annual tax bills for both water and sewer for ratepayers to MWSD.” I have no idea what you’re trying to imply.  “May be misleading.”?  Well, that’s vague enough.  I used budget numbers, not numbers from any specific revenue source, so I’m implicitly including tax money.  So please explain how my statements “may be misleading.”

It seems to me that most proponents of consolidation of sewer and water are those who are unhappy with the current MWSD and GSD boards and happy with the CCWD board.  But what makes you think that anything will change with consolidation?  Consolidating GSD & MWSD for sewer will almost certainly result in a stronger environmental bent for the combined agency.  Consolidating CCWD & MWSD will very likely result in tipping the scales back to an environmentalist board.

I’ll close by repeating my mantra:  Show us the numbers.

P.S.  Mary’s “Dummies” book cover is hilarious.

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

Terry, it’s obvious that you know nothing about running a sanitary district, have not looked at all at other district’s rates, and are just huffing and puffing.  I don’t know where my copy of the California Sewer Service Charge Report is at the moment, but from my recollection, there are many hundreds of sanitary districts in the state in the size range of GSD and MWSD.  (Side note:  half of them are Community Services Districts also providing other functions, usually parks and rec.)

Sewer costs in MWSD are higher than one might otherwise expect due to the terrain.  MWSD must run many lift stations.  A quick Google search on “california sewer service charge report” (without the quotes) turns up some interesting data points:

http://www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/vgn/images/portal/cit_609/15/29/726893313ALL-Pie Charts.pdf
showing that a number of San Mateo County-run districts have SSCs many times higher than MWSD’s.

http://sccounty01.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/bds/Govstream/BDSvData/non_legacy/Minutes/2005/20050614/PDF/040.pdf#search="california sewer service charge report"
showing Boulder Creek’s SSC at many times higher than MWSD’s.

http://www.ci.rohnert-park.ca.us/services/water.cfm
the City of Rohnert Park’s SSC is 50% higher than GSD’s.  Economy of scale?  Really?  A quick glance elsewhere on their web site hints that they’re 15-20 times the size of GSD.

Also note that the Sewer Authority Midcoastside (SAM) discharges into the Monterey Bay National Marine Santuary (MBNMS) with very stringent requirements on the discharge, which increases costs.

Come to think of it, the biggest possible local savings via economy of scale is probably the sewer plant, since treatment cost is the bulk of our cost.  But how about that, we’ve already consolidated the sewer plant!  And what may readers may not know is that GSD’s and MWSD’s collection system maintenance is performed by SAM under contract.  Economy of scale?  Done.

By the way, the “savings” from consolidating the two coastside fire districts will be virtually nothing—maybe a few thousand per year from having fewer directors and board meetings.  Compare that to a combined budget of $7M and one has to wonder what the point is.

So yes, Terry, I challenge you to show real non-trivial cost savings from consolidation.

Oh… if economy of scale through consolidation provides savings, you must not be looking at your Comcast bill.

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

I agree 100% with Barry’s 4:50 pm post.  Every point is right-on.

As to claimed economies of scale, I have yet to see any of the consolidation proponents supply dollar figures for cost savings.  These need to be real, supportable figures, not just huffing and puffing as is currently the case, or numbers pulled out of a hat.  GSD, MWSD, SAM, are all run rather lean already.  Staff aren’t sitting around staring at the ceiling, so a consolidation won’t result in fewer staff.  As to attorneys and general managers, I don’t see their workload going down in a consolidation since the number of customers would remain the same.  And keep in mind that GSD does not have a full-time manager anyway, so there’s little to save by trying to figure out how to eliminate that position, because that workload would have to be picked up by other staff in some way, and if all existing staff are fully occupied, who would do that work?  An assistant manager in the consolidated district?  Hmmm.  That would cost more than GSD is paying for a contract part-time manager.  Same for legal work, which in all Coastside agencies is done on an hourly basis by contract legal counsel, and since the workload won’t change, the billable hours won’t change.

The only monetary savings would be from eliminating some boards, and at 2/3 of one percent of GSD’s budget, I figure that our constituents probably are willing to keep paying that to retain local, responsive government.  It computes out to almost exactly 1 cent per day per household in the district.  Oh, I forgot about elections costs.  Make that a cent and a half per househould per day.  But if you want to justify consolidation on that basis alone, why don’t we eliminate all elected officials except for President?  I’m sure that there are a few people who would like that…

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

A seemingly minor but in fact very significant correction to part of what Kevin wrote:  ”the local version of the Coastal Act (called a Local Coastal Program) adapts the smart growth principles in the Coastal Act to the specific needs of each local jurisdiction.” Although County staff made the same mistake, an LCP is not “the local version of the Coastal Act”—it is the local implementation of the Coastal Act.  This may seem like a nit, but it’s a substantial difference, which the County does not want to understand.  What this means is that all LCPs MUST be consistent with the Coastal Act.  A jurisdiction may not have any LCP provisions which are in contravention of anything in the Coastal Act.  This is why all LCPs and LCP amendments must be certified by the Coastal Commission—to insure that the LCP is consistent with the Coastal Act.

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

In reference to Don’s attempt to counter my “LAFCo has no regulatory authority”, he mischaracterizes a section of state law.  Yes, LAFCo has those authorities.  No, those are not regulatory.  Note that “LAFCo” is the “Local Agency Formation Commission.  Further, while LAFCo has the authority to “initiate” certain proceedings, most such proceedings still require voter approval after LAFCo approval.  Therefore, LAFCo’s authority is narrow in scope and fairly weak, as it should be.  That said, I believe that LAFCo’s authority is excessive—it should be limited strictly to reviewing whether proposed government agencies and proposed boundary changes (1) would result in overlapping services, (2) are gerrymandered.  Beyond that, all other decisions should be exclusively up to the voters in the affected territory.

Why should other people be able to dictate our local government?  260 years ago we fought a war which ultimately was over local control vs an arrogant absentee government.  For a current local example, why should El Granada be told that GSD can’t become a Community Services District to add parks and rec services because some people meeting over in Redwood City think that we should be part of a larger parks agency?  This is particularly annoying because creation of that larger agency failed in 1994 and is unlikely to ever happen.  I see no reason whatsoever why it shouldn’t be exclusively the decision of voters in the District.  Yet LAFCo can disapprove the application just because they think they know better than we do.

Why should GSD and MWSD be told to merge, just because some people think that in government “bigger is better”?  The dollar savings in such a merger would be far below 1/10 of a percent of the combined budgets of the two districts.  Voters quite often show that they are willing to pay slightly more to have better service and local control.  See the May 2000 Little Hoover Commission report Special Districts:  Relics of the Past or Resources for the Future?.  On page ii of the Executive Summary it states “The essential lesson of the last decade is that successful enterprises – public or private – are those that understand the needs of their customers and continuously strive to improve the services they offer.  Similarly, successful organizations evolve to capture efficiencies and to
align their core competencies with customer needs. Bigger is not always better, and sometimes smaller is.” (emphasis mine) On page 12 of the main report it states “At the same time, election results and academic research show that the public often prefers the government closest to them. Even when presented with more efficient and effective options, the public will often opt to maintain the government that they know, trust and believe can be more responsive to their needs.”

So, again I ask, why should ANYONE outside of the affected area have any say at all in the form/size of government agencies in that area?

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

Piggybacking on Kevin’s comment --

While the CCC may not have stopped some really bad projects (and during the Duckmejian years they rubber stamped everything), these days all one has to do is attend a Coastal Commission meeting to see how much worse these projects would be without the Commission reviewing them.  Government agencies are loath to deny projects, no matter how bad they are.  How many Coastside projects has San Mateo County denied in the last umpteen years?  One.  So what the Coastal Commission does is attempt to reduce the badness of projects.  Of course, a cynic (who, me?) might argue that developers intentionally submit applications which are so outrageous that nobody would ever approve them, knowing that they’ll get shaved down to something only moderately ridiculous and then approved as a “compromise”.

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

(continued, since I hit the length limit.)

Don, if you want to fix perceived problems with special districts, you should be rallying public support for incorporation, and that doesn’t mean annexation which isn’t likely to ever happen.

The next paragraph in the Community Plan reads ”Community Appearance - maintenance of the community’s small-town character is of prime importance [...]”.

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

Don, you seem really committed to just wearing us down with all of the mis-information that you put out.  I’m going to occasionally respond to bits of it, but I would like readers to understand that unchallenged points are not necessarily true just because nobody bothers to spend time responding.

Here’s a good one:  “That means every year MWSD collects misallocated taxes, depriving other special districts of rightful tax revenue.  It’s a lot of money, especially when you look back 26 years.  The amount the school district loses each year probably rivals that intended to be raised by the failed Measure S.” Really?  Do you have any actual numbers?  One of us has a malfunctioning calculator and I’m betting it’s not me.  I have numbers for GSD; MWSD’s numbers will be slightly higher due to MWSD having more developed properties in the rural area.  I estimate that GSD’s total share of property tax revenue from all properties outside the U/R boundary in the District is $2,000-$3,000/year.  Remember, special districts get a small percentage of the 1% tax.

BTW, LAFCo does not and was never intended to “supervise” special districts—it was originally created to stop overlapping services and gerrymandered boundaries, such as Half Moon Bay’s “cherry stem” thumb-in-the-eye of El Granada.  LAFCo has essentially no authority under state law to supervise or regulate special districts.  That’s the voter’s job.  Who regulates city councils or boards of supervisors, or the legislature itself for that matter?  Why should special districts be treated any more second class than they already are?

Regarding special district boundaries with respect to rural areas, you might also want to read ALL of Policy 2.14 in the County LCP, particularly 2.14c.

The part that annoys me most, however, is the suggestion that bigger government agencies are better.  This is seldom true—small agencies are virtually always more responsive to what their constituents want.  It’s telling that most people pushing consolidation of MWSD and GSD are those who want to facilitate overdevelopment of the Coastside.  I challenge you to show how such a consolidation would improve services, or how it would save more than a pittance.

Since you reference the Community Plan, I figured I’d go take a look.  What I see here http://plan.sanmateo.org/page10.html is ”Utilities - consolidation of coastside water districts is encouraged, to provide improved water service to Montara and Moss Beach.  Undergrounding of existing overhead utility lines is recommended in conjunction with new road improvements.” I see no mention there of the sanitary districts, and “encouraged” is not “shall”.  BTW, are you spending any energy trying to get utilities undergrounded, or do you just pick and choose which policies you’d like implemented?

Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

There isn’t much value in responding point by point to Don Bacon’s article because his basic premise is fundamentally flawed—Half Moon Bay and the unincorporated Midcoast are not appropriate areas for “concentrated growth”, for these reasons:
1.  The large amount of sensitive habitat.
2.  The Coastal Act’s requirement for visitor access precludes high resident density that would crowd out visitors.
3.  There are no transportation hubs existing or even (financially) possible on the coastside.  Quoting from the Wikipedia article that Barry referenced:

A transit-oriented development (TOD) is a residential or commercial area designed to maximize access to public transport, and often incorporates features to encourage transit ridership. A TOD neighborhood typically has a center with a train station, metro station, tram stop, or bus station, surrounded by relatively high-density development with progressively lower-density development spreading outwards from the center. TODs generally are located within a radius of one-quarter to one-half mile (0.4 to 0.8 km) from a transit stop, as this is considered to be an appropriate scale for pedestrians.

So with that core concept of “Smart Growth” permanently lacking, the Coastside is not eligible for dense development under the pretense of “Smart Growth.”

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