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”.)
I’ve never really understood why anyone pays any attention to newspaper editors’ and publishers’ “opinion” pieces. Just because they buy ink by the barrel doesn’t make them any more qualified to comment on things.
The Review is particularly noteworthy in that, from my perspective, their editorials virtually always support the wrong POV.
Having one of the few (if not the only) active poll on Coastsider, I’d say that it’s virtually impossible to cheat the Coastsider polling software. Why? Simple—you must be logged in with a vetted id and the software keeps track of who, by login id, has voted. No cookies needed, no IP tracking needed, no cheating allowed.
(I am still asking El Granada residents to go vote in my poll, regarding DSL vs Comcast in El Granada: http://coastsider.com/index.php/townhall/viewthread/26/ )
Some in HMB have said that people outside the city should stay out of the park debate, but Joel McKinnon raises an interesting point. Kids from the whole Coastside go to the middle school in HMB and the high school in HMB, and it’s useful for there to be a park there that they can go to after school. So it appears there is at least one valid reason for people outside of the city to participate in the park debate.
Getting back to the original story topic, would it really kill anyone in City Hall to post a copy of the agenda in a window facing main street so that those walking by on Main Street would see it?
Joel, please note the sentence I wrote following the one that you quoted. To save you the trouble of scrolling up, here it is: ”And I�m not necessarily referring to the City Council.” The City Council is certainly going to listen better to the citizens because they have to worry about getting re-elected. You have misquoted me via selective editing.
While I disagree with Mike on some issues, I find it very grating how some people feel it necessary to continue to blame Mike for everything from the war in Iraq to global warming and they miss no opportunity to bash him, even when they have to do it as a non sequitur. Give it a rest. He’s been off the council for a year and half. Anyway, weren’t there 5 council members at the time? Why is the venom focused on only one of them?
It’s amazing (as in appalling) how the faction currently in power in HMB has no room for dissenting opinions. And I’m not necessarily referring to the City Council.
I’ve been saying for quite some time that HMBFPD is subsidizing PMFPD, and Vince has now provided some numbers to support that statement. I had been under the impression that the subsidy was $200,000 per year, basically the amount of the negotiated “adjustment” a couple of years ago. Vince seems to be implying that the subsidy is much higher than that.
I’m very concerned that the merger of Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District and Point Montara Fire Protection District to form the Coastside Fire Protection District is being done primarily to cast that subsidy in stone. Everyone keeps talking about “cost savings”, yet few are willing to name a number and support it. The savings from the merger will be at most 1% of the combined budget. Operations have been merged for a decade so there are no further operational savings—it’s all some relatively trivial cost savings from eventually reducing the number of board members and board staff.
However, there is this constant drumbeat of “one Coastside, one District, everything shared.” The reality is that HMBFPD could survive on its own if it really had to, although it would be tough for a while. PMFPD as you’ve shown, simply cannot survive on its own any longer, at least not without abandoning the guideline of 3 firefighters per engine or substantially raising the benefit assessment for all Moss Beach and Montara property owners. So how does the merger fix this? It uses HMBFPD’s better cash flow to prop up the higher cost MB/M area. My concern is that sometime after the merger there may not be enough money to run the combined district and the board will then come to all the property owners in the district and ask for more money. I have previously done calculations and determined that to equalize the assessments between the current HMBFPD territory and the PMFPD territory will require doubling the current HMBFPD assessment from $35/parcel/year to just about $70/parcel/year. Is this fair? That’s why I’ve insisted on the merged district having “service zones”, but the reality is that the written conditions for the merger are intentionally very weak on how the service zones will be run.
Carl, if you’re so against the merger, rally the community. The LAFCo protest hearing for this is in HMB on June 11. That’s the last chance to stop this. Other than this post, I’m not going to knock myself out, because it seems that the two of us are the only ones against the merger.
“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”—George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Given the viciousness of local politics here, I think that it’s perfectly reasonable to accept anonymous appeals. (When I first read the article, I thought the opposite, but I’ve reconsidered. The fact that I started out agreeing with the premise of the article shows how artfully this situation has been spun.)
If the basis of an appeal has merit, why does it matter that it’s anonymous? If you call the police and say someone has been shot, do they refuse to investigate unless you identify yourself? Yes, they ask, but if you refuse to answer I don’t think that they ignore the report. If you report a building on fire, do they refuse to send a fire engine if you don’t identify yourself? Why is an appeal of a planning decision any different? If the law is being violated, it needs attention, regardless of who is pointing the finger.
As to all the other fun and games mentioned in the SMCT article, well, it’s entertaining. I just hope there isn’t any true security problem, but there may be more to it than what was stated in the article.
The article states “[...] and the staff time wasted in responding to anonymous appeals”. Again, if an appeal has merit, it’s not a waste of time. Staff who are trying to paper over violations of the law may consider it a waste of time.
The most important sentences in the article are these:
The appeals rely on technicalities to make a larger point � that the planning staff does not always follow its own rules.
In the case of the Popeye’s Chicken appeal, it turns out the appellants were right:
And this in probably the most liberal publication in the country.
Did anyone claim that all ostriches are conservative?
Gotta love citing the Cato Institute. I’m a Libertarian and Cato’s agenda often annoys me. They can try to hide behind a facade of science, but their agenda is clearly political.
On the issue of if the earth is warming, why am I cold now?, I think that “climate change” is now preferred to “global warming.” “Global warming” considers only world-wide averages over the long term. The nature of the complex ecosystems involved means that patterns will and maybe already are changing such that some areas will actually get colder while others get warmer, some get drier and some get wetter. For example, a region which is currently kept temperate by a warm ocean current could get cold if the climate change caused by global warming causes the path of that warm ocean current to shift so that it no longer reaches where it used to. When we have a really wet “El Nino” winter here, it’s due to a certain level of warming in a particular region of the Pacific Ocean which then causes a change in the pattern of ocean currents. At a lower level of warming of that region, the result here is warmer winters but no change in the total rainfall.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on upon him not understanding it.”
-- Upton Sinclair
Barry wrote
And, Pacifica has been a lab for a lot of bad development practices that we can take lessons from here on the Coastside.
On the other hand, Pacifica isn’t zoned for a 3 story wall of hotels between the highway and the ocean as El Granada is. The County could take a lesson from Pacifica on waterfront zoning. Notice that with a few exceptions, you get a pretty good or excellent view of the ocean from nearly the whole length of SR 1 through Pacifica. Yet the County’s stupid (that’s with a capital STUPID) zoning will result in the “Malibu syndrome”, where you know the ocean is just over there, if only there was a way to see or get to it. HMB’s zoning for the cherry stem, otherwise known as the El Granada waterfront, is just as obnoxious as the County’s.
I still say that all this talk about signal/no signal is a distraction from the real issue: the Vesting Tentative Map (VTM) is expired. There’s a solid court decision saying so. Why doesn’t the City and the Coastal Commission simply say to the developer “your subdivision is gone.”? Oh, the developer will sue (again). Who cares? He’ll lose (again). The Coastal Commission has money to defend that lawsuit, and they will prevail. If 0 houses are built instead of 63, the whole Terrace traffic issue disappears.
Yes, if the subdivision goes away due to the expired VTM, the developer can submit a new request for subdivision. However, with the public watching this time, the City won’t be able to approve it because they can’t make the necessary findings that State law requires for approval of new subdivisions. (The findings likely couldn’t have been made back when the current subdivision was approved, but nobody was paying attention back then.)
In answer to Suzy Kristan’s question, I heard that before the Silver signal could be built, the North Main Street signal for the entrance to Strawflower shopping center was built, and CalTrans won’t allow two signals that close together. More recently I’ve heard claims that the elevation difference between the highway and Silver is too big of a problem. I could either say “that’s an easily fixable problem”, or I could say “hogwash”. Just look at the place—isn’t Silver built all the way out to the highway now, just blocked off?
And why can’t Silver be made into an entrance-only intersection and Terrace into an exit-only intersection, or maybe the other way around?
Or… I’ll say it again: Michigan Left Turn, which as a necessary side effect would result in solving the problem for the Grandview and Casa del Mar subdivisions. CalTrans has a 150 foot wide right of way to work with. If you study the diagram at the above link, and visualize a single through lane instead of two in each direction shown in the diagram, it easily fits in the 150 foot RoW. It’s even possible that there’s room for two through lanes in each direction in a 150 foot RoW.
I’ve been told “Michigan Left Turn isn’t in CalTrans’ book and they won’t do it.” Well, Tunnel wasn’t in their book either, and when they were prohibited by law from building the bypass, suddenly they found the “building a tunnel” pages in their book. CalTrans’ book doesn’t mean diddly. It also describes requirements for turns to be banked, yet CalTrans doesn’t build banked turns. I heard that in New York, you can go around banked freeway turns at full freeway speed. Not so in California, because CalTrans doesn’t read their own book.
Try a Google search for
Read a few of the > 1 million hits. Next do a Google search forrising sea level evidence
Read a few of the 8.5 million hits. Next search Google forglobal warming evidence
Read a few of the million hits.increasing carbon dioxide evidence
You can even skip all the ones which are blog entries. Heck, skip everything that isn’t a university or science institute. (Include site:*.edu in the search terms to limit to just higher educational institutions in the USA. [That’s a colon after the word site—it’s really hard to tell on my screen.] Still 35,000, 46,000, and 43,000 hits, respectively.)
You’ll still have lots more to read than you have time for before I have beachfront property (and I live at least 1/4 mile from the ocean.)
All real estate investment is speculation. And what speculation means is that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. But for some reason real estate speculators seem to think that they receive a guarantee of profit with the deed to their new property. There’s a reason why Ken was able to acquire that property at such a low price—the seller had to have known that it was undevelopable or nearly so. But in typical developer style, he thinks that he can bully his way through to making money on a property that in his heart he knows he never should have purchased in the first place.
I’m convinced that this proposal is similar to others we’ve seen here before—a scare tactic to get the public to find some agency to buy the land.
A significant part of this thread is basically a rerun of articles and letters in the Review some years back. At that time I wrote that there are businesses in HMB which have signs up which say “If you live here and work over the hill, we don’t want your business.” What’s that, none of you have seen such a sign? Sure you have, only the text on it is actually “Open 9-5 Monday-Friday.” John Lynch mentioned the lumberyard is gone. No offense meant to John, but who cares? They were the most blatant example of the above. Nobody working 40 hours a week over the hill could ever be here when they were open.
I too have noticed that in the evening, nothing other than restaurants and bars seems to be open on Main street.
How can a shop close at 5 pm or 6 pm on weekdays and then whine that they get no “local” business? I’ve heard that something like 85% of employed Coastsiders work away from the Coastside. Those shopowners need to go over to San Mateo or Redwood City or Sunnyvale, then leave there at 5 pm and see how much shopping they can do when they get back to Main Street.
Comments were made in that thread years ago that many of these are small family-run businesses and they need time off and can’t stay open long hours. Well, then open and close later, or close for a few hours in the middle of the day, or something. Maybe have a posted schedule of different hours on different days, so that there are some late evenings. But no business which closes every weekday at 5 pm or 6 pm and has minimal or no weekend hours has any right whatsoever to whine that locals don’t shop there.
And I agree with comments by other people about the issue of what the shops are selling. Has anyone ever addressed the years-old question of “where can you buy socks on the Coastside?”
[Putting on my asbestos suit now.]
Yee offers HMB $10 million bill to put park on Beachwood, Aug 19 9:54pm comment by Kathryn Slater-Carter, Tonight the HMB City Council unanimously decided to support Senator Yees assistance. Senator Yee found a way to both help…
Yee offers HMB $10 million bill to put park on Beachwood, Aug 19 3:51pm comment by Barry Parr, Ken, if you want to submit comments on the CUSD, you and the other candidates are welcome to submit all…
Yee offers HMB $10 million bill to put park on Beachwood, Aug 19 8:50am comment by Ken Johnson, Thank you Senator Yee and staff! I hope that the CC4 has not delayed to long to make it happen.…
Yee offers HMB $10 million bill to put park on Beachwood, Aug 18 7:43am comment by Francis Drouillard, Hopefully, the HMB city council will recognize that this is the best deal they will ever get. For a mere…
Yee offers HMB $10 million bill to put park on Beachwood, Aug 16 1:19am comment by Kevin J. Lansing, Essentially, with this new bill, HMB now has to come up with only $3 million in new money to make…
POST breaks ground for new and improved trails at Pillar Point Bluff, Aug 15 8:54pm comment by Barry Parr, I'm not out there as often I as I like, but I biked out there a couple of weeks ago…
Yee offers HMB $10 million bill to put park on Beachwood, Aug 15 8:37pm comment by Mike Ferreira, Bravo to Senator Yee and to his staff. Both the Settlement and its AB1991 subset were a bizarre result of…
Overnight: Patchy fog. Otherwise, cloudy, with a low around 52. West wind around 6 mph.
Wednesday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a high near 64. WSW wind between 5 and 8 mph.
Wednesday Night: Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, cloudy, with a low around 56. West wind between 6 and 8 mph.
Thursday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, cloudy, with a high near 64. West wind between 6 and 13 mph.
Thursday Night: Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 52. West wind between 5 and 13 mph.
Friday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, partly sunny, with a high near 63.
Friday Night: Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 52.
Saturday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 64.
Saturday Night: Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 53.
Sunday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 65.
Sunday Night: Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 54.
Monday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 64.
Monday Night: Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 53.
Tuesday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 64.
PFC: 2:35am; AFD: 11:00pm
