Comments by Carl May

Sierra Club director speaks out on LCP update

Of course, reducing the number of cars and trucks during the commute crunch accomplishes an improvement in traffic flow without having to spend on destructive and grossly expensive road expansions that will eventually lead to more and worse traffic. Population growth in California has been and is stimulated by infrastructure expansion (inevitably with the promotion of growth by developers, the self-serving engagement in the growthg game by politicians and bureaucrats, and a mouth-breathing adherence to the growth ethic by the public).

There are no practical, working checks to keep development and population to sustainable levels. Infrastructure expansion is merely a way to get the public to subsidize development. When an area is already overdeveloped and unsustainable for the kinds of artificial activities going on in it, any growth is degrading, and the growth rate is simply a way of stating the rate at which things will get worse.

Anyone truly serious about wanting to make life on the midcoast better cannot avoid consideration of how to make the human population here sustainable. An increase in population, cars, and hardscaping and a decrease in finite natural resources and ecosystem services--and infrastructure expansion to serve these life-and-environment-worsening increases and decreases on the midcoast--can only make the place worse than the unsustainable situation it already is. One cannot clean up by making more of a mess. Smart shrinkage of the midcoast population is the sensible course for the future, and even those who only see the world through the headlights of their jammed-together autos would get better lives along with everyone else.

Carl May

KQED reports on Devil’s Slide

Not the worst I have ever heard; but, as with all journalistic reports on the Devil’s Slide/Twin Tunnels situation, there are between a half dozen and a dozen errors in fact, shading, and omission that affect the substance of the report. The reporter is almost certainly repeating these from the spin of people she interviewed and any background reading she did rather than generating the errors herself.

Carl May

County Times covers Midcoast growing pains

Why does development, the increased development Gordon so obviously favors, need to go forward? Development in an already overdeveloped place is either corrupt, ignorant, or just plain stupid. Into which of those descriptions does Gordon fall?

Carl May

Midcoast park planning public meeting is Thursday night

Note how the breakdown of “needs” doesn’t begin to conform to the priorities and findings of previous surveys of the unincorporated communities and hundreds of hours of discussions and worked-out proposals from previous parks and recreation groups.

Like so many initiatives by the county for the midcoast, clearly a stacked effort to produce a predetermined result.

Carl May

Video Column: Right Here In the Middle

A limited amount of modest commercial development to serve residents might take place in the current commercial areas of the several unincorporated communities. In most locations, this can be accomplished without extending the built footprint or resource footprint--through conversion of existing residences in commercial areas, for example. In a few instances, a commercial interest might buy and remove a residence or two elsewhere in the community to free up the resources for a new establishment in a commercial district.

Any discussion of increased development beyond what already exists on the midcoast is a discussion of how to make things worse. Even people called “environmentalists” consider it a victory if they get some project to be less bad than it might be. Given all the mindless degradation that has already gone on and the planned degradation that is being created by developer/construction interests through their “paid” politicians--the county’s proposed LCP revision is a great example of this--the only discussion worth the effort of honest, clear-thinkng people should be how to make this place better rather than less worse. I know lots of people who understand this but see no opening for it through existing governmental structures or governmental decision-makers.

Carl May

Video Column: Right Here In the Middle

I don’t expect the cornucopians to understand it, but because the midcoast is already grossly overpopulated and unsustainable in terms of now-diminished resources and non-degrading infrastructure, no new residential building, anywhere in the area, should be allowed without at least the removal of existing residential buildings to compensate. Smart shrinkage down to a comfortable, sustainable human population would suggest that even greater existing residential development should be removed to allow new development--in terms of number of people housed, resources demanded by the development, and hardscaping.

In addition to “green” building and conservation measures, use of development regulations to slowly wind down the population to a sustainable level is a way to accomplish improvement of the overall picture for our communities without economic disruption. Because services to residential development usually cost local government more than the development produces in income through taxes and fees--a condition that is even more pronounced in overbuilt areas like ours where very expensive artificial means must be employed to provide resources and ecosystem services that can no longer be provided by the local environment--government might even consider a few salient purchases of residential property. This would be partially justified by the money government would lose if such property was developed.

Carl May

Letter: Workshop Monday night for proposed subdivision near Farallone View

Saw this one in an earlier incarnation--just more evidence that bad ideas never die.

Carl May

What’s wrong with downtown Half Moon Bay?

To those coastsiders who consider downtown HMB important, stop worrying about Harbor Village. Like downtown HMB, but moreso, that mess aims to make money off of tourons and the Ocean Colony/Miramar crowd. Local dollars spent on necessities won’t be going there.

And stop worrying about Carmel. Downtown HMB has no chance to become anything similar. It does not have, nor has it ever had, the physical setting, architectural setting, and human history necessary to replicate that unique town.

Finally, stop worrying about trying to remake a genuine downtown for locals out of Main Street. If a unified political will to attempt that existed, it would take three or four decades for the effort to play out--and then success would be unlikely. Property values on Main Street won’t permit the kinds of stores needed, and the outlying shopping centers that sucked the ordinary business out of downtown have an interest in remaining viable. The train has already left the station as far as locals shopping for necessities go.

All that remains is trying to improve “downtown” as something else, something that will attract more people no matter what the economy, something that offers midscale locals more to purchase at their level of affordability and more options for recreation. Whatever that is, it will have to develop its own identity rather than trying to emulate some place it cannot hope to be.

At that, I probably would not spend a dime more in HMB than I do now. It’s not where I live, not my community. Last bit of advice: improve and regulate Main Street with majority attention to people who actually live in or care about the city. Those of us with affinities for other places have problems in those places to concern us.

Carl May

What’s wrong with downtown Half Moon Bay?

Not all, but most of the businesses catering to locals and to midcoasters to the north left downtown HMB a decade ago. The 80+ percent of locals who are not above the wealth gap, anyway. The downtown businesses moaning loudest now are the ones that displaced the businesses selling the stuff and services residents need for their daily lives.

The changing of direction in downtown HMB, with all of the idiotic references to Carmel, has been a conscious and permitted process, approved and guided by the property-serving political types who still hold sway in city government and boosted by the Chamber of Commerce.

As a resident of Montara and Moss Beach (MMB) for over thirty years, I have never looked on downtown HMB or anything else in going on in that city as much more than a neighboring, small-town amusement except in those matters where HMB tries to exert hegemony (sphere of influence) over the quite different (socially and politically) unincorporated communities to its north. As it stands, ordinary people in MMB can do better timewise and pricewise shopping in their small commercial areas and Pacifica, our neighbor to the north, for trips initiated from home.

Those few small businesses left in HMB, both downtown and the outlying shopping centers that first killed downtown, that are still the best option can be saved for occasional special trips.

Carl May

Hwy 1 one-way-only until about 6:30pm

Again, the place where the current little slides are occurring will, in no way, be affected or bypassed by the twin tunnels. And the roadbed will last just fine through the light material coming down.

This is probably a poor hillside for slides partially because of the eucalyptus forest, which does not hold the surface together as well as native vegetation. The fix is to stabilize the cut into the hillside that was made to create the roadbed, perhaps with a structure like a retaining wall. But that would not keep frustrated people craving the oversized projects Caltrans is “selling” to the gullible, so don’t look for anything realistic in the near future.

Carl May

Hwy 1 one-way-only until about 6:30pm

Sea Bowl is the bowling alley.

Exactly right that the location of this small slide (in an area where small slides have occurred numerous times before and where there was traffic control again this day--3/2) south and a little bit uphill from Linda Mar is nowhere close to the major landslide on Devil’s Slide and would not be affected by the underground freeway of the twin tunnels.

It is, however, in an area where there will be ongoing pressure and fear-mongering by the bureaucrat-developer cabal to four-lane the highway. In fact, the plans for doing so exist, in essence, in the older plans for the bypass freeway, plans that call for cutting away the hillside above where the current little slides are occurring for hundreds of feet in elevation. Never forget that the two lanes each way in the twin tunnels are a setup for four-laning the highway at either end, resulting in a multi-lane oceanside expressway from Linda Mar to Montara, a project that would not have a chance for approval if proposed all at once. The twin tunnels will provide the most expensive and by far the most difficult portion of that expressway.

Carl May

Loss of laundromat will be a blow to the community

Raj Bechar, Raman’s son (and a CUSD teacher) did make comments on the potential loss of the laundromat during his appearance before the HMB City Council on the matter of the coffee shop. I’m guessing the video is still available on Coastsider for anyone who wants to hear them.

Carl May

Coastside Gourmet Coffee’s lease offer rejected by landlord

Of course the posturing politicians on the HMB City Council are not going to do anything in this instance or any other in which the inevitable outcomes of the city’s growth, development, and zoning policies and regulations play out. Still the outpouring of love and support for Raman’s shop at the council meeting was well worth the effort for those involved, a gift of appreciation Raman and Raj will never forget.

So some growth-addled property company looked at Half Moon Bay, somehow did a mind-warp to Burlingame or San Mateo, and overspent on a shopping center. Now they need to make it pay off. I’d be very worried if I were one of the other independent businesses in such a center with ownership aiming to become a franchise strip mall.

It’s probably far-fetched to ask, but is there any other accessible commercial space in the vicinity to which Raman could move and retain his loyal clientele? He might even get a temporary boost out of the publicity.

Carl May

Darin’s Monday Photo: The Bird and the Bee, in Montara

Yeah, outstanding to capture an in-focus “two-fer” like this.

Carl May

County to chip in for environmental review of widening Hwy 1 in Pacifica

This is another of those truly stupid wastes of taxpayer money on a study of a question that has already been resloved multiple times--just not the way certain political and development interests wanted to see it resolved.

Any mouth-breathing fool knows the commute-hour backups (and they are strictly limited to commute hours) in that stretch of road, one I drive several times almost every day, are not due to the number of lanes but, rather, to the intersections with traffic lights. This is conclusively demonstrated by the fast and easy flow of the same amount of traffic on the same number of lanes in stretches where there are no lights. Expansion of the roadway by adding lanes, and the negative impacts that would go with that, is entirely unnecessary for the current population in (essentially) built-out Pacifica and would not speed traffic at all if the same kinds of lighted intersections are retained. So the intersections would be the next thing to go in the scheme, replaced with ramps onto and off of a freeway-style road.

And this is not mostly about traffic on the designated stretch of road. Various political, bureaucratic, and development interests have long colluded on piecemealing an expressway/freeway all the way through Pacifica to serve a larger population--something they could never get away with all at once after all the negative consequences of the freeway through the northern half of the city. (Due to access factors, it is no accident that almost all of Pacifica’s visitor-serving features and destinations--and the businesses that go along with such features--are in the southern half of the city, where there is no freeway or other limited-access road.) For example, if the lane expansion about to be “studied” had been in place, the two recent elections on changing the zoning and adding hundreds of residential units to the quarry area might well have gone the other way thanks to arguments that infrastructure to handle the developments was already in place, thus adding another thousand or more car-dependent people to a city already far too overdeveloped for sustainability. And the pressure to change the open-space zoning of the ridges--Pacifica’s saving grace because the vegetated ridges break up the smear of residential development--will be increased. Look at the hillsides and ridges in the northern third of Pacifica for what would be coming.

Carl May

Video Column: Right Here In The Middle

Any scheme for human activity should include, at its base, how that activity can be sustained in a place. Anything that cannot be sustained is nothing better than a intractable problem generator over the long term.

Because the coastside is already way beyond sustainability for the kinds of lives we are leading here--including the development, use of resources, and ecosystem services needed to support what we are doing with our lives--adding more lives at any income level only makes the overall situation more insane. You can’t grow your way out of overgrowth, overgrowth being growth beyond what can be sustained in and by a place indefinitely. As it already is with past overgrowth in recent decades, yet more growth of any kind on the midcoast will continue to degrade the fundamental quality of life for us all, though the wealthy (in terms of money and other resources) here will be able to insulate themselves from the most trying consequences longer than the rest of us and the hit-and-run developers and many of their camp followers will move on.

Any objective person who cares at all about the long term knows that what we already need is smart shrinkage of the human population on the coastside and redevelopment for sustainability. Affordable housing and public services need to be handled in that downsized redevelopment, like everything else we might do in an improved artificial landscape by the grace of our natural endowment.

Brainwashed with the “growth ethic"--stated simply “growth is good”? Then learn to think in terms of negative growth if you give a hoot about the future.

Carl May

Coastsiders working to save local coffee and chai shop from replacement by chain

Your sarcasm is wasted, folks. During its early Westinghouse years the “Harbor Village” project actually had plans for a tall fake lighthouse (presumably a beacon for shoppers who would have trouble seeing the modest little place from Highway 1?)! I believe it was gone by the time Nerhan got the development. Crude, bizarre stuff like this is sometimes put into plans so developers and/or government bureaurats can pretend to compromise by dropping an element that was unnecessary in the first place. Most politicians and some environmentalists hereabouts call such empty compromises “victories.”

I’m surprised we haven’t had more suggestions for a Raman’s House of Chai instead of the chicken grease pit in the gas station. On the other hand, Popeye’s would be yet another local source of bio-fuel. And you’re kidding, aren’t you--those who claim a fast-food chicken joint in an existing structure would make the haphazard, hardscaped blight of buildings and pavement at the intersections of 92 with Main Street and Highway 1 in HMB worse than it already is?

Carl May

Coastsider fights for the right to stream clips from MCTV

Leonard,

Once again, you need to know the specific individual arrangements between the parties paying MCTV to video something and MCTV.

What you are describing in your assumption is often called a “work made for hire.” The party paying for the creation of something is, indeed, the copyright owner in such a case. It usually takes a formal contract, coverage in an employment contract, for example, to establish a work made for hire.

Unless it is paid for as a work made for hire, the copyright to a photograph belongs to the photographer the moment it is made--the moment the shutter is released. You’d be surprised how much litigation and legal precedent there is on this matter. Who owns the copyright when a photographer is on her employer’s nickle during working hours but happens to take a picture of something that is not the subject of her employment? Some contracts explicitly make such images the property of the employer, and some without the necessary clauses or instances where there is no explicit employment contract allow the photographer to retain copyright. The party paying to have a photograph made or paying someone’s wages during the time that person makes a photograph cannot be assumed to be the copyright owner.

The same kinds of considerations carry over to all kinds of creative activities--writing, music, etc. One simply must know the specifics of individual cases to know who properly and legally owns copyright to a creation. Yet more considerations get into how creations may be licensed for reproduction, sold, or used or for various purposes. Just because one owns copyright does not mean one can sell or use a work for anything one wishes.

Added on to all this in the case of governmental activities are considerations of public domain. Many works (but not all) paid for by a government in the U.S. and made by government employees or persons working for the government under specific contracts cannot be copyrighted and may freely be used for any legal purpose by any person. One would have to look at the arrangements between MCTV and the government agencies involved to know who owns the video and whether or not the images and sound might be in the public domain.

Even if in the public domain, MCTV still may not be under any obligation to provide copies of the material--that, too, depends on arrangements. In this particular situation, however, one could capture a broadcast of public domain material and use it for one’s own legal purposes.

Sorry for the length of this. Copyright can be a convoluted and detailed matter and is sometimes counter-intuitive. That’s my point: assumptions frequently cannot be made.

Carl May

Coastsider fights for the right to stream clips from MCTV

Who owns the copyright depends on the arrangement between the party paying for a work and the party making the work. One cannot make assumptions.

Carl May

Coastsiders working to save local coffee and chai shop from replacement by chain

There are only a few businesses left in HMB that have any appeal or utility at all for me. If Raman is forced out, there will be one less. Is there any space available to him elsewhere that would be as convenient for those of us who pop in for a quick cup and a bit of refreshing philosophy or wit before we blast out over 92 or down 1?

Carl May

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