Putting on my libertarian hat, I’d say that the surliness of both of those companies stems directly from the fact that they’re government-created government-sanctioned government-enforced monopolies with only a charade of government oversight. There are only two possible ways to fix them:
1. Allow competition (my preference)
2. If you absolutely oppose #1, then the only other solution is that they have to be government agencies with a directly-elected board, so that if you’re unhappy you can vote the bums out and elect new bums.
In the absence of one or the other of the above fixes, nothing will ever improve; in fact it seems to me that it only gets worse over time. There is no incentive for a government-enforced monopoly to operate in a manner which creates happy customers. It’s not like a department store where if you’re not happy you can walk across the street to the next store.
Ok, maybe there’s another option:
3. Top management’s compensation is set exclusively by a vote of the customers. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this one.
“Small jumbo jet”?
The most interesting part of this is that Doug won with the firefighter’s support, only 4 years after they did everything they could to sully his reputation to get him off the Board. Go figure…
Ken, I’m glad that you put “wise” in quotes. Sabotaging voting for the majority in order to facilitate voting for a very tiny minority doesn’t make sense to me either. The old system that San Mateo County used was just fine for most of us. I’m sure that someone could have come up with a way to meet ADA for those who need it, without forcing everyone else to use a system which most people seem to be unhappy with, and which provides a much greater opportunity for undetectable election fraud.
I agree with Kevin—I’d rather have fewer well-informed voters than a large turnout of voters who don’t know about the issues. I want people to vote, but only if they truly understand what they’re voting for. For higher offices, one way to fix this would be to ban political parties so that people have to think for themselves instead of just voting the party ticket. Thomas Jefferson didn’t like the idea of political parties and thought that they had designed a political system to avoid them. That lasted, what, 4 years? In any case, I wish the “get out the vote” people would spend at least as much effort on informing voters of the issues. I’ll claim that one reason for the low turnout for this election is that most voters didn’t really know what the issues are.
Regarding GSD’s flat rate for residential, Nick deBeer asked “Did the voters vote for the flat rate charge?”
I doubt it, but that’s simply speculation because it’s been that way for longer than I’ve lived here, and I haven’t read all of the old board meeting minutes. GSD does charge non-residential customers based on water usage. (GSD uses a strength factor for non-residential customers, as Mr. Perkovic described above.)
Personally, I’d like to revisit the residential flat rate, but in the 10 years that I’ve been on the board the other directors have not been interested in even discussing it.
From my review of some old old minutes (so old the staples are rusty), I suspect that charging according to usage never came up. Once upon a long time ago there was no SSC—costs were paid completely from property taxes. When they starting planning for construction of the SAM system in the late 1970s, post Prop 13, they needed some money and put in a very small per-customer charge, I think on the order of $1-2/month billed monthly. Some people were quite upset at that. My guess is that over time as costs went up but property taxes were basically capped, that flat charge continued to be incrementally increased without any consideration of restructuring to base it on usage.
As to those on wells, the County’s Well Ordinance requires that every owner of a well submit a report annually to the County of the water usage from the well. The County does not enforce that clause. I don’t know why they don’t.
Granada Sanitary District’s Sewer Service Charge (SSC) for single family residential is currently $314/year—flat rate, not based on usage. ($314/year = $26.17/month.) GSD’s rate is lower than the average residential rate of the other 2 members of the Sewer Authority Mid-Coastside for a couple of reasons, the most notable of which is, as our General Manager said “GSD has a dream topology”. It’s [mostly] a bowl-shaped territory, and we all know what flows downhill. I’ve been told that one reason that MWSD’s sewer costs are higher is that due to the numerous hills in the territory, many lift stations are required, and lift stations are expensive to operate and maintain.
My recollection from a year or two ago is that HMB’s average SSC for single family residential was somewhat over $400/year. It was increased for this year but I don’t remember what it is.
I’ll probably have to create a new page on the GSD web site to list fees and charges; thanks for pointing out that this info should be online.
For those who think that sewer charges are high on the Midcoast (includes HMB), here are some things to consider.
- Some big cities have lower charges. Many many areas larger than we are have higher charges.
- County-run sanitation districts (no locally elected board, in comparison to our sanitary districts with a locally elected board) have rates which much more often than not are 2-5 times ours.
- We live next to a federally-protected marine reserve. We have to invest more in making sure that we don’t pollute the Reserve.
Historical footnote: When I took office at the end of 1997, GSD’s SSC was $365/year. 2 years later we cut it to $273.50/year. A couple of years ago when the State increased their theft of our local property tax money we had to go back up to $314/year to compensate, still much lower than it had been in earlier years.
Leonard Woren, GSD Board member (writing his own opinions)
Terry, I’ve been out of town and only now saw your comment. I have nothing to add to Ken’s response, unless you want me to say that you’re trolling, and you wouldn’t really want me to say that, now would you? Therefore I have to assume that you just accidentally overlooked my intro paragraph.
Dana asked “did San Francisco sign an ordinance outlawing styrofoam?”
To quote Jonathan Lundell, “Google is your friend”. I did a Google search on “San Francisco” styrofoam and got good results.
Apparently the ban took effect on July 1, 2007. I didn’t know that. It seems that S.F. isn’t the first city to consider or do this—in the results summary I see mention of Berkeley and Santa Monica. No surprises there…
Maybe the HMB City Council could pretend for a day to care about the environment and ban plastic bags and polystyrene (the generic name of Styrofoam)?
Maybe we could get the Board of Supervisors to do so? After all, they did ban smoking in County parks.
I used to live near LAX, and the maintenance facilities weren’t far from my condo. They were prohibited from doing engine “run ups” during certain hours. We were instructed to call the tower for noise complaints occurring off-hours. I once called at 1:30 am when they were doing a “run up”—which is very loud—and while it was happening the tower insisted there was nothing going on! (He could probably hear it though the phone from my end!) My recollection is that they were annoyed at being called for something as trivial as a noise complaint. Those who enforce complaints against pilots must have a line in their job description specifying deaf, dumb, and blind.
I suggest time-stamped video with sound. And if the plane is close enough to be a noise problem, video cameras should have enough of a zoom to read the “N” number which I’m pretty sure must be on the bottom of every airplane.
I didn’t know him anywhere near as well as many others here, but from my relatively few interactions with Cordell I have to say he was a really great guy, and this is sad news. (I wasn’t close enough to know that he had health problems.)
I believe that the FAA comes out with new safety standards every 3 years (or maybe it’s every 5 years?) Regardless, the County is not doing the HMB Airport Master Plan Update, which is now around 10 years overdue. Why? Because updating the Plan requires the County to incorporate the latest FAA safety standards, which will almost certainly result in an expansion of the “Airport Overlay” zone in Princeton. The AO restricts development and the County wants to allow as much development as possible before the Master Plan Update happens. The County is behind by at least 4 editions of the FAA safety standards. I’ve actually lost track—it’s more likely 6 by now.
I have not heard of any proposal to lengthen the runway. However, everyone needs to understand that the runway is 5000’ feet of concrete, but has “displaced thresholds” which are something like 733’ from each end, indicated with a line painted across the runway. This makes the effective length of the runway approximately 3500’. I don’t remember for sure the rules, but it’s something like this: on takeoff, a pilot must have wheels off the runway by the ending displaced threshold, and on landing, the pilot may not touch down until after the displaced threshold. With that as background, be on the lookout for attempts to change the displaced thresholds! Princeton property owners want to shift them to the north to allow more development in Princeton, which will increase the noise for the houses in Moss Beach under the flight path. Some homeowners in Moss Beach want to shift the displaced thresholds to the south, which will increase the amount of land in Princeton in the AO, and will increase noise in El Granada.
BTW, the cited references to “Runway 30” and “Runway 12” are to the same runway—runways are designated with the first 2 digits of the compass point of their use. “30” is heading 300 degrees, and is the normal direction of use of the HMB Airport runway. When the wind is blowing the opposite direction, on average 10% of the time on a historical basis, operations go the other direction and the runway is then known as “12” for heading 120 degrees. Note that 120 ("12") + 180 (half a circle) = 300 ("30").
Think “lemonade”. At least the more destructive inland bypass won’t be built. And I don’t treat cheering the tunnel as approval of the damage they’re doing while building the oversized twin tunnels, but rather it’s a cheer for the fact that they’re actually starting!
What was the original completion date for the tunnel? 2004?
You weren’t serious?
;-)
Under California Law, don’t the real estate agents and the seller have to disclose that no hookups to the public water system are available and therefore if the well fails, the property may be declared uninhabitable? If this disclosure wasn’t done, isn’t there a legal case against the above parties?
Some years back, while he was still on the Midcoast Community Council, David Spiselman pointed across the street from his house in Montara where a test well was being drilled and he said to me “That’s really stupid—if the well fails they’re going to be in big trouble.” That was the first or one of the first private wells in the non-rural portion of Montara.
I would like to echo all the positive comments above without restating them, other than to say… amazing and fantastic!
It’s decades-old news that removing painted crosswalks at uncontrolled intersections improves pedestrian safety. It should be intuitively obvious why this is: without the painted crosswalk lines, pedestrians are more likely to realize that they have to take responsibility themselves for their safety when crossing, and not just jump into traffic expecting cars to come to a screeching stop simply because that’s the law in California. (Actually, that’s an oversimplification—pedestrians are not allowed to cross when vehicles can’t safely stop for them. Put another way, if you get rear-ended because you were forced to make a sudden stop because a pedestrian stepped in front of your vehicle, it’s easily arguable that such an accident is the pedestrian’s fault.)
A significant part of the problem with crosswalks at uncontrolled intersections has to do with view angle. To a pedestrian, the 2-foot-wide crosswalk lines are glaring, giving a false sense of security. To a car driver from a distance away, that line is a barely visible thread.
All that said, cities need to be made much more pedestrian friendly than they are. Ever try to walk down North Main Street into the Strawflower shopping center, say to McDonald’s? It’s virtually impossible to enter Strawflower on foot. That’s inexcusable.
HMB is finally building (part of?) their parallel trail, giving pedestrians a safe place to walk next to the highway. When is the County going to do so in the unincorporated Midcoast? And of course this still leaves the safe crossing issue, which is basically what started this discussion. Personally, I’d like to see highway crossings which aren’t signals and aren’t at grade, meaning overcrossings/undercrossings. In a few places where the highway is close to the ocean (notably El Granada), there are view issues with placing overcrossings. I do not believe this to be an issue at the location in HMB under discussion. It’s been stated that a signal installation costs $1M. How much does a pedestrian bridge cost to build?
CalTrans’ feeble attempt to explain “why can’t a bridge be built?” falls flat, contrary to Darin’s implication:
Before this video was published on Coastsider there were all sorts of demands by frustrated coastsiders, wondering why a bridge could not be built,
I submit that we have 100-150 feet of engineering that proves that a bridge could have been and still could be built. Just drive the road past the repair and note how short the repair is. Now notice how—outside of the very short slide zone—the roadway remains solid and much higher than the now-depressed slide zone which has gotten to the point of being like an amusement park roller-coaster the way that CalTrans just lets it keep sinking. Apparently, many people think that the slide area is the whole mountain. It’s not—it’s basically just the part where they bolted the concrete barrier to the side of the mountain with long bolts/cables into the solid part of the mountain.
Now visualize a bridge about 3 times as long as the bolted concrete mini-fortress that they built, going straight from peak-to-peak, anchored on solid ground beyond the slide zone, with the bolted concrete underneath eventually sliding into the ocean without disturbing the bridge. Easy. And inexcusable for CalTrans to dismiss it out of hand with no engineering basis. As bridges go, this one would be pretty small. It could be prefabbed offsite and put up relatively quickly.
Last night’s 11 pm KNTV channel 11 news had a 2 min 20 sec story on the shopping center, focusing on Raman and his shop. That’s a lot of time for any story on the 11 pm news. The intro set the theme: “What happens when local businesses are replaced by chain stores?” Lots of sound bites from locals, and a half-second glimpse of Cheri Parr with her camera.
Carl, do you know that there’s a Libertarian listed in the choices? Hint: When he re-registered as a Republican he got himself elected to Congress. Just because he’s registered and listed as R doesn’t mean that that’s what he really is. Some local Libertarians are going all-out in support of Ron Paul’s campaign. Check his voting record—he isn’t a Demopublican.
Mirada Surf is somewhere around 45 acres, give or take. (Over the years I’ve heard various numbers ranging from 42 to 47 acres, with 45 being the most recent number tossed around.) Roughly double the land of the HMB future park site, for double the money—cost per acre nearly identical. Much of the Mirada Surf East parcel is sensitive habitat leaving very little land which could be used for traditional park uses.
While considering what to do, HMB needs to bifurcate the acquisition cost from the development cost. Park development costs will be the same regardless of which land it goes on. Development cost for the HMB Community Park following the draft plan that was presented is high because the plan that was presented was way too intense use, cramming everything into that one space.
I sure don’t understand HMB. The one plan that I saw (watching a City Council meeting on TV) for the park development appeared to be an attempt to cram everything that the City needs in parks into this one park space. Of course that’s expensive. Since that park space comes nowhere near close to meeting the recommendations for acres/1000 residents figures that I’ve seen, it seems to me that they should be developing this park at a much more modest level (and cost!) and looking to provide other park functions on other park sites. Just my opinion. I’m sure that this idea will get be savagely attacked by a certain faction. I don’t care; I’m just happy that I don’t live in HMB. As much as we rag on the County for not providing parks in the unincorporated Midcoast, has anyone noticed that HMB doesn’t actually do any better? I get a good laugh every time I pass by MacDutra “park”. 5000 sq ft of concrete, a few benches, and a restroom. (This is not meant to diss anyone who may have worked hard to create that space—it’s just not what I figure most people think of when they hear the word “park”.)
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 4 9:50am comment by Kevin J. Lansing, Ken Johnson has it right. Why is an elected school board member like Charles Gardner more occupied with things like…
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 3 10:43pm comment by Ken Johnson, Yes Paul, Charlie Gardner has an 'agenda' - do to MWSD what he accomplished at CUSD. He has been on…
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 3 5:57am comment by Paul Perkovic, Charlie, Do you have any MWSD agendas, staff reports, minutes, letters, etc. - i.e., some actual documentation - that supports…
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 2 10:44pm comment by Carl May, Mr. Gardner: Why an intertie with the NCCWD? You say "and only use the water when we need it." Do…
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 2 10:22pm comment by Ken Johnson, Charlie Gardner, You are good at asking questions and making unsupported claims - you are not very reliable at answering…
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 2 8:46pm comment by Charlie Gardner, Paul, What has MWSD done to investigate the possibility of an inter-tie to the north with Pacifica? Is it true…
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 2 5:31pm comment by Paul Perkovic, The analysis is very useful to Montara Water and Sanitary District (MWSD) customers, too. One of the misplaced attacks that…
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 2 1:47pm comment by Todd McGee, I'm sure Paul's analysis is correct and very useful to the CCWD customers. And I will readily admit that he…
Letter: Alternatives to July 4th fireworks?, Jul 2 12:29pm comment by Leonard Woren, What would the 2 sides be in a 2008 tug-of-war?
Just the facts: Where's the water for CCWD?, Jul 2 12:25pm comment by Leonard Woren, Every new CCWD customer increases the water cost for all existing CCWD customers. This is simple arithmetic, which "engineer" Jim…
