Why the constantly pushed idea that the two districts should merge (consolidate) before farming out of operations to either CDF or San Mateo? Why can’t the two districts be kept separate, maintaining community control over the provision of emergency services, and simply sign on to the same arrangement?
Given whatever financial realities, why isn’t the employee group not in favor of farming out operations allowed to present a proposal for locally-controlled operations? Wouldn’t these people have some ideas for alternatives to the things they criticize in the proposed deals with outside agencies?
Ever since the first badly constructed agreement for joint operations with the HMB district--an agreement by a partially appointed (not elected) board that aimed at eventual consolidation without any consultation with the citizens of the district--I feel the citizens of Point Montara with a distinct community conscience have been railroaded by narrowly-directed interests. It does no good to go to meetings to give support or ask questions if real alternatives are not on the table.
This meeting is not “critical” for many Point Montara citizens because it because it does not include their democratically-determined desires for the handling of emergency services in their communities.
Carl May
Might we surmise a “consolidation consultant” is a wee bit biased in favor of consolidation processes? Was Olsen hired as someone who had a neutral record for recommending both for and against consolidation, depending on circumstances? Haven’t noticed anyone around town speaking with folks in the community about consolidation--what community values are in the mix?
Carl May
It’s Italia, for sure, but the remaining Toto’s in San Bruno somehow doesn’t come up to the Toto’s that was closed in Daly City. Does Chez Shea have pizza?
Carl May
If one claims to care about the quality of life, preservation of positive values in one’s surroundings, sustaining one’s life through the most trying times, and leaving a future for one’s own species (including one’s children), then one cannot avoid the realities of population, resources, and subsidies for life provided by the natural environment. Blind faith in myth and magic, when in support of growth where further growth cannot be sustained or any other artificial and invented agenda is wrong every time.
In any region of California, where there is demand for housing due to population growth, expanded infrastructure, and especially new and or larger roads to hold greater numbers of passenger vehicles, *always* induces post-WWII-type growth through induced development. The examples are legion, especially in the large urban centers. Exceptions do not exist. So-called planning controls on growth are artificial contrivances that are compromises with the irresponsible growth and development industries in the first place, subject to change as political winds rise and fall and change direction. In practice, any limits to growth are repeatedly shown to be nothing more than approximate benchmarks. If there is demand for development and, most importantly, short-term money to be made by developers, there will be a push to set higher limits (such as buildout numbers) whenever existing limits are approached.
An entire sub-industry exists for selling growth myths to the public. The growth ethic is now as deeply accepted by many as personal religious doctrines. Neither kind of belief needs to resort to experience, evidence, or principle. Because myth and magic are taken on faith, no amount of failure permitted by public compliance due to belief in a thoroughly promoted growth ethic will sway true believers. Places like the coastside that are already environmentally degraded, increasingly unsustainable (and, consequently, less secure in terms of life support), and increasingly expensive in terms of obtaining the basics of life can *only* get worse with dogged faith that somehow this place will avoid going through what every other place goes through.
Who benefits from overgrowth? Only a few, and certainly not the poor car-confined dweebs sitting in traffic on four-lane or six-lane roads where once they sat in two-lane traffic, getting just what they bargained for even though they “believed” differently.
Once population-driven problems are recognized in a given area, it takes no genius to know what needs to be accomplished to turn things around and start making situations better for all. Whether or not people, in general, will be willing to think for themselves, learn basic existing information, and dump irrational myths is the bigger problem.
Carl May
More hardscaping cannot alleviate the problems already caused by excess hardscaping. Greater disruption and obliteration of natural geographic features and ecologic systems can only degrade remaining natural aesthetics that some find appealing on the coastside. The growth ethic, the notion that growth is good and inevitable, is, in the US, largely a socioeconomic fabrication of the post-WWII era, when it was (ignorantly) decided to make growth and development a cornerstone of enlargement and profit-making in the US economy, even though this ultimately relies on cornucopian myth and magic.
The coastside is already beyond being able to sustain its human population with locally available resources necessary for life support. Water, to mention an obvious one, is expected to come from somewhere else out of a magic spigot. Some think this spigot resides in San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy system. But Hetch Hetchy, itself, is overdrawn in terms of sustainability and has severely damaged the Tuolumne River and its watershed. So what? Sacrifice what’s left of the Tuolumne River (some of which is in a national park)? Go to another source? Well, all of California is in water arrears, and a drought of the sort seen in the 1970’s would be an ugly demonstration of just how bad the situation is. Go out of state for the magic source? California is already battling neighboring states for water, especially out of the Colorado River (which is so overdrawn that it doesn’t reach the Gulf of California any longer--so much for sustaining that major river’s watershed and delta). And altough water insanity is particularly pronounced in the arid West, few places anywhere in the US have secure water supplies for their current population. And no place, anywhere, has enough fresh water for indefinite growth--no matter how slow or fast. The growth ethic survives on delusion.
When you’re unsustainable, doing more of what makes you unsustainable only makes the situation worse, no matter how much of what you don’t care about you are willing to sacrifice and how many expensive problems you are willing to put off for future generations to solve with even the even larger amounts of magic that will needed to address increased dilemmas. Let’s hope today’s midcoast kids learn how to survive on what grows out of their parents’ myth and ignorance (and any nourishing memories of today’s scraps of ever-diminishing natural coastal features and resources).
Carl May
There is much less traffic on Highway 1 between Montara and southern Pacifica because a big part of the Highway 1 traffic in southern Pacifica is generated by the resident population of southern Pacifica (about the size of the population of the entire midcoast from Montara through Half Moon Bay) and by people visiting southern Pacifica from the north.
Highway 1 from Montara to Pacifica is not currently congested in either direction. No need for four lanes. Because the midcoast has already exceeded a population that can be sustained with local life-support resources, there should be no need for expensive, expanded infrastructure (such as the underground freeway of the Interstate-sized twin tunnels). the miles between Montara and Pacifica are rural by both the common definition of “rural” and by the legal semantic practices associated with California’s Coastal Act. A number of traffic and safety studies have been conducted for this stretch of road, and relevant parts of the Coastal Act for the same stretch have been discussed at great length in, among other places, the several EIR go-arounds for the ill-fated above-ground bypass “freeway.”
For those new to the information that exists in this area of concern, some of the appropriate documents with data and analyses from studies and comments on same from numerous individuals and groups used to be found in the reference section of the HMB Library. Maybe they still are? In any event, one can, with effort, probably produce statisitcs and documents through requests to the District 4 offices of Caltrans.
Carl May
Leonard,
Now you have gone and done it--quoted material that would be such a joy for some to discover on their own.
Much-referenced Section 30254 of the Coastal Act is just one of the many parts of that set of laws that would have been blatantly violated by the above-ground bypass. A roadbed capable of holding five to six lanes plus shoulders would have been gouged into Montara Mountain. Initially, only three to four lanes (depending on location) plus shoulders would have been paved. Do recall, however, that by playing with semantics (which involved pretending continuous passing lanes do not count) and depending on the public’s willingness to go along with lies and omissions rather than check numbers for themselves, the foul blight was declared to be two lanes in the environmental documents prepared by Caltrans, approved by the Coastal Commission and other agencies, and eventually upheld by the courts after many years of challenges.
The civics lesson is that in a system of government that can be bent by rhetorical winds, two tunnels (each as big as what would be needed for the amount of traffic) can be called one tunnel and four lanes can be called two and an underground tube can be called “scenic” if the right people agree that they are. The underground freeway violates several sections of the Coastal Act (not nearly as many as the bypass) if one takes the words of the law literally. But who does that?
Carl May
Refusing to look at the plain language of the Coastal Act that requires Highway 1 to be a two-lane road in scenic rural areas, and refusing to look at the traffic load for the highway on Devil’s Slide that does not require more than two lanes for either capacity or safety reasons (the bottlenecks are the lighted intersections on Highways 1 and 92, not on Devil’s Slide), and refusing to look at the human carrying capacity of the midcoast (the sustainable human population at the levels of consumption and “quality of life” demanded) which does not require more than two-lane highways makes faith in baseless myth and magic that has never worked in the past easier.
Blind faith in failed cornucopian ideals created to artificially pump up the US economy after WWII does not constitute a supporting argument for pie-in-the-sky notions that more destructive overgrowth (which actually further *reduces* carrying capacity as it destroys supportive resources) and wider roads are necessary.
Carl May
Leonard,
The walled areas in which cars and trucks drive in the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 are, in fact, narrower than the finished bores in which traffic will drive in the Devil’s slide tunnels. Same goes for the roadways in the two bores of the No Name Tunnel on I-70. The roadways in the two bores of the Hanging Lake Tunnel on I-70 are about the same size as the roadways in the Devil’s Slide tunnels.
The point is, tunnels designed for a major, multi-laned interstate freeway are roughly the same size and capacity as the roadways in the Devil’s slide project. The reason for using tunnel examples in Colorado is that one of the consultants for the Woodward Clyde tunnel feasibility study for Caltrans that came up with nothing but oversized designs for what is supposed to be a two-lane highway was from Colorado. The reason to focus on size rather than the job that actually needs to be done for any District 4 Caltrans project is that Caltrans *always* attempts to rationalize the maximum cost it can get away with.
As legions of past Caltrans administrators, employees, and contractors can attest, money is the measure of this bureaucracy, the way it keeps score on how it is doing, the factor that determines its power in the state government hierarchy. All else, including how citizens are affected by its projects, is secondary. As we know, all this is nothing unusual, being how most state government agencies in California operate.
Carl May
Imagining further growth will solve the multitude of current problems caused by overgrowth is like imagining more crack cocaine or meth will solve a person’s drug-induced behavioral problems. Yes, the impossible growth ethic has been firmly planted in the minds of true believers, chosen as an economic engine for the US after WWII, but no one has yet come up with a method for sustaining it in the real, finite world.
And then there is the little matter that it is the law that Highway 1 is supposed to remain a two-lane road in scenic rural areas. And that a two-lane tunnel or repair of the current alignment was what the public voted for in Measure T. Only by overlooking facts can the twin tunnels be construed to be a two-lane road, just as Caltrans misrepresented a bypass roadbed that could hold a five-to-six lane freeway as a two-lane project.
One can look at current knowledge, numbers, and measurements, or one can throw their future to the winds of myth and magic that have never worked in the past to create a sustainable society.
Carl May
A little more for the uninformed:
The actual wall-to-wall dimension in each of the bores of the Hanging Lake Tunnel on I-70 in Colorado are undoubtedly less than 40 feet, as anyone who has driven the tunnel with its two lanes and modest shoulders on either side knows--or, easier, just check out the pictures of the existing tunnel.
More striking are the actual spaces where cars travel in the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70. Confined by panel walls in the bores on either side, the traveling area in each bore consists of two 13-foot lanes and about a 2 1/2 to 3 foot walkway on one side--openings less wide on this major Interstate than the Devil’s Slide Tunnels! What is more, there is often two-way traffic in one of the bores when the traffic is heavy in one direction (so there will be three total lanes through the tunnels in the heavy direction), making one of these *narrower* bores two-way as a singlke tunnel at Devil’s slide should have been if the current roadway could not be repaired.
Hey, if having tunnels sized for an Interstate on the supposedly (by Coastal Act for scenic rural areas) two-lane Highway 1 at Devil’s Slide seems a bit much, check out the No Name Tunnel on I-70 in western Colorado: roadways narrower than the ones planned for the Devil’s Slide twin tunnels on an Interstate!
Caltrans wins (and spends) again!
Not that it was going to happen in District 4 of Caltrans--where spending is always maximized, the politicians are easy, the “environmentalists” cave in, and the public is largely gullible putty in the PR spinner’s hands--but a truly two-lane, single-bore tunnel that would be perfectly adequate for Devil’s Slide could be built. Check out the Collier Tunnel in northern California or the new Wolf Creek Pass Tunnel in Colorado for designs.
Carl May
Please, anyone incapable of staying in a 12-foot lane, whether or not they are driving through a tunnel, should turn in their driver’s license for the sake of others on the road. Redi-Wheels and Redi-Coast are “redi” to help the directionally challenged.
Carl May
No worry about a “Little Dig.” This tunnel project will be two-lane in lie only. Each bore of the two tunnels will be big enough for a two-lane tunnel with room to spare. The two tunnels taken together are as big as tunnels on interstate highways--the two bores of the Hanging Lake Tunnel or the two roadways of the Eisenhower Tunnel on Interstate 70 in colorado, for examples.
As for tunnel fumes, huge jet fans costing enormous amounts of money to install and maintain will be part of a ventilation system costing, by itself, many times what a good repair (dewatering and stitching together) of the road across the landslide would have cost.
Anyone who wants an alternate route on the current alignment is years too late. There are now hundreds of millions of dollars worth of momentum pushing the underground freeway. Caltrans made solid arrangements with government officials and so-called environmentalists and came up with plans, which have been pushed through necessary approvals, that all but assure the agency will get the current almost $300 million budgeted plus whatever overruns they can tack on. The money game is what Caltrans is all about, and they are sufficiently able to play the politicians and compliant public to make sure they get it.
Carl May
Here’s a great way to get a parcel tax of whatever wording and size passed in CUSD: buy votes by figuring out a set of exemptions that will excuse every property owner in one way or another. Get it labeled “Measure O” so voters will misread the “oh” as “zero.” The campaign slogan can be “It won’t cost you a cent”! This will also promote greater citizen unity in the school district, as no voter will have cause to resent a break other voters are getting.
Oh, sure, some of the “I’d rather fight than think” bunch wouldn’t like it due to the lack of more OPM (other people’s money) to subsidize the education of their children; but they might also benefit by seeing what it takes to win an election for a change.
Carl May
Some folks would do themselves a big favor by reading the words that are actually written in a forum like this rather than jumping to the same kinds of fuzzy conclusions that tend to be applied repeatedly to the CUSD parcel tax situation.
I never claimed that some people voted against Measure S because they believed they could not make as much money on developing North Wavecrest without the middle school . I merely suggested this kind of speculation is as good as most of what one sees in this thread because of the failure to get decent data about what really motivated the electorate in the past election.
As for the precinct results over the past 25 years, or so, all I did was to point out they substantiate the longtime, very general, somewhat imperfect voting trend toward greater concern for the “environment” as one goes north from Half Moon Bay through the unincorporated communities. This gradient was very prominent for the several decades locals fought Caltrans’s proposed Devil’s Slide Bypass (the above-ground version), with the communities most inconvenienced when the slide went out (and Caltrans dragged its feet on repairs) the staunchest against slaughtering the mountainsides above their homes with a noisy freeway-sized highway that would facilitate an even greater pace and scope of overdevelopment on the midcoast.
Whatever, the numbers in Parr’s precinct-by-precinct numbers that started this thread do show that communities with a more “pro-environment” voting record over the decades were not the ones that killed Measure S. All geographic communities on the midcoast killed Measure S, with only two coastside precincts (none in Half Moon Bay) passing the measure!
I hope those who can’t give up the idea of a parcel tax won’t merely go back to the drawing board, resulting in a massaged rewording built on speculation as to what might get more voters if they are lucky. They need to go back to their premises and learn something about an electorate that has been taken too much for granted.
Carl May
Ray,
You will do yourself a big favor if you look at all the recent parcel tax measures for CUSD on a precinct by precinct basis. A lot can be learned about the leanings of the different communities that way--as well as the communities of the midcoast with something in common.
There is no fixed remaining 3% or 1% or whatever percent because the leanings of the electorate can, and sometimes do, change from election to election--overall, community by community, and precinct by precinct. Half Moon Bay, overall, has been particularly fickle with its votes on all kinds of elective government positions and other community matters over the years--one of the many reasons some of us in the unincorporated communities want nothing to do with annexation to HMB even though our county government stinks with regard to our local issues.
Gee, you don’t suppose those who no longer stood to make as much money out of overdevelopment of North Wavecrest due to selection of the Cunha middle school site sat out the most recent election? One will never know until a study is done to replace the random speculation. Or at least study the electorate at a later time before wasting the midcoast’s time and emotion on yet another parcel tax proposal.
“Assumptions are the mother of all screw-ups.” Had that on my office wall for a number of years. Holds true for all kinds of questions. One thing I promise you, an assumption that those not voting or voting against parcel taxes for schools really want to do something for your kiddies is wrong. In any election there are going to be voters who might go either way; and you and others who want a parcel tax need to know who they are and how to put them in your column (if possible). They are not you. Your kids are not their kids. This was patently obvious after the first parcel tax election; but tax advocates have, instead, chosen to pummel voters with essentially the same crappily-constructed wording time and again. This qualifies as insanity by some definitions.
Carl May
There has long been a readily observable general increase in concern among voters for positive values in our physical surroundings as one goes north from Half Moon Bay through Montara. Look at any common vote (these are usually on a county-wide basis) on any so-called “environmental” measure over the past 30 years to verify this--measures on open space, development, alternatives to landscape- and community-destroying freeways, and so on.
Better, go to the results from all the individual precincts on the midcoast for the same measures. The overall gradient holds but is not a perfect one, partly because of the distinct differences among precincts in less “green” Half Moon Bay. And as the midcoast has been increasingly overbuilt, the distinct individuality and character of the northern communities has been diminished somewhat by the surburbanites moving into the new boxes built to appeal to more of an urban mindset.
It is entirely true that the term “environmentalist” has been rendered all but meaningless hereabouts, fractured into whatever the person using the word means by it. There are no substantiated principles behind the term and no common cause. This is essentially true for the whole country, not just our area. Some would now say an “environmentalist” is one who cares about their surroundings--whatever those surroundings may be and whatever the person cares about. Thus, the worst land-and resource wrecking, hit-and-run, community-disrupting, money-grubbing, out-of-town developer becomes an environmentalist.
Carl May
This thread has declined into the inconclusive nature of a previous post-mortem just after the election.
Fact is, no one has gathered the information to say with any certainty what factor or factors caused Measure S to fail. Barry has shown several things that were not responsible, in spite of claims by some letter writers.
It is very difficult for some who prefer to shoot from the hip to recognize there are ways to get more reliable information that has a much higher probability of hitting the mark. Well designed, objective surveys of the electorate and well-designed statistical analyses of the data obtained could do that. The answers for this last election are most likely not simple ones, witness the breadth of speculation here and elsewhere.
And the answers are probably not entirely the same as the answers for previous elections on the CUSD parcel tax due to differing conditions this time around. Whatever is eventually learned about the last election, yet more analysis of the electorate before drafting another tax proposal would be highly recommended. The midcoast has long been fickle with its votes--especially the suburban subdivisions of Half Moon Bay.
Carl May
Ray,
Please check out the facts. Go to dates and documents for the frog. Go to the water figures for California. Not liking facts does not make those facts propaganda.
And all,
I know some people have trouble coming to grip with the impossibility of the growth ethic and the destructiveness of further growth in places that are already overdeveloped and overpopulated. But the physical world is finite and measureable. When use of physical resources, notably water in overdrawn California but also equally diminished resources like biodiversity that may take more understanding to realize the huge natural subsidies they provide, is not sustainable through times when those resources are least available, everyone (except those few wealthy enough to buy their excess at the expense of others) suffers. Blind faith in a contrived economic ethic isn’t good enough when it comes to life support. In the long run, nothing succeeds that involves using more of something that is already in short supply.
Carl May
Ray,
The freeway bypass through Montara Mountain was fought for decades, producing thousands of pages of literature on the many very real issues. The red-legged frog wasn’t even on the radar screen, not having been listed until May, 1996--and then listed without critical habitat for it being designated. You are making a totally baseless assumption about the situation. The red-legged frog didn’t enter the picture until the environmental studies for the twin tunnels were being conducted. This was after Measure T passed (overwhelmingly in the communities of the unincorporated midcoast) and the stupid bypass was, at long last, all but a dead issue.
Natural water supplies are what they are. Local water shortages are due entirely to the overdevelopment and overpopulation of our coastside. Only fools develop beyond what resources are available to support development and population in the leanest years to be expected (known from records). There is no magic spigot elsewhere to provide water, inasmuch as the water budget of all of California has long since been exceeded in terms of what can be sustainably drawn for human activities.
Want a better coastside for your children? Get going on de-development projects that will improve the area to what can be reliably sustained. No blind faith, no magic spigot, no horn of plenty. Your children deserve better security than that kind of goofiness can provide.
Carl May
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…
