Comments by Frank Long

Mavericks waves injure spectators

I noticed from the helicopter feeds that the previous tide seemed to have left an obvious splash line about six feet or so at the base of the cliff face. Wouldn’t that lead someone to suspect that it might happen again on the next high tide?

A Solution for Surfers Beach in Sight?

Rather than re-engineer the whole thing, has anyone thought of just pulling up breakwater in the westernmost and easternmost corners and putting in large tandem culverts at each end. The angling of the culverts could be parallel, or non-parallel, with the latter tending to deflect incoming and exiting water over a wider range. It would merely allow for water to enter and exit the harbor more efficiently, considering the damage that has already been created by the erection of the breakwater.

I had participated in the Current Study that was done not long ago and as I had pointed out, all that data was at the surface level; there was no attempt to ascertain currents at the 5’, 8’ or 10’ depths. My suggestion was to use a series of small floats tethered to suspended milk crates that would act as current drogues. One test might be releasing three different colored floats from the same location; one having its drogue at 2’ feet, the next color at 5’, and the third at 10’ (the 10 footers for deeper areas that might accommodate that length). Anyway, it was a thought, because I can’t imagine that there’d be a uniform direction throughout the entire water column at any given location.

But my vote would be to look into altering those two spots on the existing breakwater with at least two wide culverts (or a bridge) at each end.

My two cents

Current HMB City Council’s slate sweeps the field

I guess it’s how we see the world, Joel. Some people look outside and see the sun shining, put up their flag, figure everything is copacetic and then sleep tight at night in their jammies, while other people seem to look at larger issues.

Personally, I never could understand the thinking behind the Tsunami Evacuation Routes having cars potentially stacked up along Route 1, not unlike sitting in three miles of backed up traffic trying to get to HMB at 7:30 in the morning, while the Big One rolls over the Coastside. The signs should be pointing eastward up into the hillsides.

With so many parents now having to bus their kids to school, further adding to the traffic congestion, at what point is someone going to say that enough is enough ........ at least for the time being? The county’s plans to upgrade 92 are all but non-existent at this point, and those plans would have to go all the way out to 280 to be of any true value. So, does that mean that anyone who contradicts the pro-growth strategy is being negative? If it makes people happy to believe that is so, hey, go for it, but on the contrary, I’d see that as being logical at the very least, that is until some of the other constraint issues are seriously addressed.

So, after you’ve tackled the bussing, commuter traffic, tax equity, and Beachwood issues, please let me know, because then might be a more prudent time to reconsider developing the coast. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they are being negative.

Current HMB City Council’s slate sweeps the field

Well, like I said, sometimes people are so afraid of trying something new that they’ll continue to abuse themselves by keeping with what they know.

All the same, it would be interesting to understand why people are not showing up to vote. Have things gotten to the point where they’ve become so disenfranchised, even in a small city like HMB, that they figure their vote doesn’t count, so why bother?

As with the Bloomberg election in NYC, it seems that money does all the talking, irrespective of common sense and ethics.

Current HMB City Council’s slate sweeps the field

Many years ago, my dad had a suggestion box in his dealership. He wasn’t big on communications, anyway, but this was an attempt on his part. But things had gotten so far out of whack that all he was getting for suggestions were those for getting “more intimate” with himself.

His answer to this problem was to rip the box off the wall. Rather than view the the answers he did get as a sign of how his strategy wasn’t working, he chose only to see the outcome through some preconceived notion of what he thought the answers should look like.

Well, whether we are talking about national politics or those of Half Moon Bay, it’s the same thing. What we really need is the voting box that says, “I’ve had it with all this BS; you’re all a bunch of thieves,” or put more nicely, “NONE OF THE ABOVE.”

Perhaps when the numbers come in and the candidates realize that people actually took time out of their day to show up and express their disdain for the abuse that has perpetrated our voting system, and how fed up with politics the population really is, MAYBE then the candidates might realize they need to campaign on some issues more meaningful to the population they are attempting to serve, instead of the self-serving agendae we’ve seen to date.

And we wonder why voters don’t show up at the polls any more. Is it because they are apathetic or is it because they’ve become apathetic thinking that their vote won’t having meaning, no matter what the outcome.

Current HMB City Council’s slate sweeps the field

Joel, making the statement that “voters expressed a clear repudiation of League for Coastside Protection policies”, hardly reflects the politics or the peoples feelings about the Coastside. Look what just happened in New York City, and worse, why.

Michael Bloomberg had to throw in close to $100,000,000 to defeat his opponent and only won by the slimmest margin, and that was only after he had “massaged” many non-profits with a significant number of “donations”, one of them alone being as high as $600,000.

Bloomberg declines a salary for the job, manages to overturn a two term limit to get himself BACK in office, for what reason? .......to stay in the spotlight coming up the 2012 election, and why? AIPAC is working hard to polish up their “boy” for a spot in the Whitehouse; as if we don’t have enough problems with Israel’s meddling already. All this from some “select” group of people who believe they have the right to ram their narrow view of the world down everyone’s throat in spite of the triviality that they’re supposed to be living in a DEMOCRACY.

So, why am I discussing Bloomberg and NYC? Because it’s SSDD in Half Moon Bay. You have the same cast of characters pulling the same crap. While voters everywhere have grown apathetic over not having their voices heard, supporters of the HMB regime are ready to pronounce a clear mandate. Hardly.

If the voters didn’t express their feelings about the LCP at the polling stations, it was probably because the LCP didn’t get their points across effectively, OR that the majority of voters would still rather accept what they are used to, rather than adopt a different path.

“Take away the causes of war as we withdraw from Afghanistan”

Unfortunately, Lee, getting out of Afghanistan was yet one more weakly veiled promise, not part of a realistic agenda .... and I voted for Obama, hoping as everyone else had, that CHANGE now had some chance. It’s interesting note that even the leftist alternative news sources, who supported Obama, have now turned against him for his failure to deliver, and that’s interesting. He’s now getting slammed from both the left AND the right, but not through the mainstream, corporate owned, spoon feeding, media.

When you see what is happening through “non-standard” news sources, you can see that Washington has plans to be in Afghanistan for a VERY LONG TIME, that is unless no incumbents get re-elected AND we are somehow able to curtail the corruption from lobbyists.

The big banks, the defense contractors, AIPAC; there is a lot more at stake here than just a small country in the middle east. This is part of the economic war which many foresaw with China decades ago, but no one in Washington was listening to anything but their wallets. They were too busy posturing themselves for the resultant gravy train and hoped they would still be in office when the train came to town.

As much as I do sincerely believe that we have a global warming problem, why are the same people who created this problem lined up first at the trough to benefit from the taxes imposed on everyone else. Al Gore has positioned himself to become a parasitic billionaire if this carbon tax credit goes through. Looking at the history of the NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT legislation, we are slowly being sucked into a set of financial and global commitments that will not allow the U.S. to withdraw from. The same logic holds true for Codex Alimentarius, where exceptable levels of DDT, Aldane, Lindane, and Chlordane (organic poesticides that had previously been banned from the U.S.) will now be re-allowed under our commitment to this New World Order scam. When I originally saw these pesticides posted on their website I was flabbergasted, but within a few months, that section of the website was removed.

But back to Afghanistan, sorry to say, the arms sales will continue only because too many people are still getting rich off it ...... and if anyone wonders why ...... they can always look to Washington, at both sides of the aisle and in the Whitehouse. This never did have anything to do with the spread of Democracy; it was just an excuse for us to rush in there before the Chinese did.

Current HMB City Council’s slate sweeps the field

Well, it just goes to show you that the headache won’t go away until one stops banging their head on the wall. I hope HMB is well stocked with band-aids.

How to get clinic records if you’re out of town

Ellen, you’re not the only one. Having just moved back to Rhode Island, the response I got from Ms. Schoenmann seemed to imply that they made a hard and fast rule with FedEx and, well, what’s my problem? The problem was that I had no one to send the records to during FedEx daily hours of operation. Apparently I am expected to just sit and wait for two days for the driver to show up so I can give him my signature.

So, at this point, I’m in the middle of a four part volley with Ms. Schoemann. She keeps focusing on how their office is burdened and that they can’t be making exceptions for everyone.

Well, here’s my situation. There are only FedEx drop off boxers in my area, so unless I take time off in the middle of the day, contend with an onslaught of tourist traffic or shell out for two bridge tolls later in the evening, I have to drive the equivalent of going to Oakland to pick up my records, ........ that is unless they are able to check off the first question of Section 8 on the FedEx Airbill, which allows for delivery without a signature. But then, there they go with having to make exceptions again.

One would have thought someone would have looked into being able to accommodate the anomalies encountered in this record distribution, but so far, apparently not.

Downtown in a Downturn: Epilogue

Many good points here,but I still have to say that the vast majority of residents I have spoken with still say they would support downtown if it had a format that was more in keeping with what they had moved here to attain, and I truly wish that the efforts of the DBA (formerly DMA)and those of the Chamber were able to envision a picture larger than their microspopic one where a select number of these elitest social miscreants peer down from their ivory towers, wondering why the local peasants aren’t partaking in their cute boutiques and their twisted image of prosperity.

That image is, for all intents and purposes, blind to the needs of the community. I don’t think anyone actually set out to do anything evil, here, but rather, I just don’t think they have the acumen to manage the needs a population of 20,000 or so. They THINK they do but instead throw a bunch of money at the problem, which they seem to have a plentiful supply of rather than logic.

When I had a copy of this letter posted on my door during my departure preparations, one storeowner continually came over to cover my letter up with some pseudo-niceties crap, but all the while fully intending to cover up my letter to limit damage control, not just once but at least half a dozen times. I’m was till paying rent there and this person, obviously with no sense of boundaries, had taken it upon herself to limit what people could read about the issue. Never mind the fact that many residents had actually agreed with it; it was her job to “police” what information was made available to the public. God forbid that the residents might actually come to the realization that other Coastside residents actually felt the same way as they did, and that each of them was not unique in their disdain for the way Downtown was being run and managed.

But just like that self-styled policewoman posting her letters only to thwart my message, so too is the Chamber and DBA complicit in beating this dead horse.

Someone had said to me before my returning to the East Coast, “What would you do to address this problem?” Well, rather than point any more fingers, I’d just say, “Imagine what it would look like if the Chamber, the DBA, the Review, and the City Council actually decided to embrace this issue and tried to find out what, in fact, the residents wanted.” Local purchases would go up, Sales Tax Revenues would increase, there would be less cars on 92 going over the hill solely to shop, and that sense of “community” that has been eroding ever since the Orange Menace invaded the town in 1971, might actually have a chance.

First, a Resident Survey might be a good place to start, but the questions would have to be sincere and EMBRACE the problem, not just do lip service while still supporting the tourist business in lieu of the needs of local residents. If a survey IS going to be done, it should be done in a genuine attempt to find out what the needs are of those people that these groups continue to blame for not shopping here.

The insularity of the Coastside corridor due to the mountains is the one thing that can SAVE Downtown, even during these rough economic times, but not while the residents are being forced to take a back seat to the Chambers “visions” of busloads of tourists that just never seem to materialize. Unfortunately, many pleasant folks who run these “tourist shops” are going to be in for a rude awakening when they finally discover that their business format is not compatible with serving the residential population. As the the economy is struggling, it is a time when these store owners can least afford a change in their inventory, but something has to change.

If the City Council and the Review got behind the Chamber and the DBA, and the residents could actually see some meaningful change, I see the prospect of a lot of positive changes.

From rain soaked New England,
Frank Long

Letter: Oasis Natural Foods will close unless a buyer is found

Well. now we’re getting to the crux of the matter. This is less about the economy and more about a group of business leaders with myopia.

As I have stated many times in different pieces I have contributed, Downtown’s worst enemy is its business leaders. In addition, it’s footprint on the map doesn’t give much for planners to expand upon with Santa Cruz having a broader area between the hills and ocean and Davenport hardly any. It really isn’t anyone’s fault that no one had the foresight to see how screwy the city’s layout would ultimately become, but in more recent years, the whole point was overlooked.

The Coastside SHOULD have had a parallel means of access and egress at the base of the hills. Reinforcing the Surfers Beach area SHOULD have been addressed long ago. And, if anyone had any foresight way back when, they SHOULD have built the city closer to the beach. (I mean, right now, this tsunami evacuation plan has everyone piling up on the same two laned parking lot that they traverse on their commute.) But who knew? I saw it when I first got here, but I didn’t know at that time that forces were trying transform HMB into Vegas. As I’ve jokingly said before, these forces can’t even by a tie in the same town they’re trying to pass off as an upscale destination spot.

When I went into that location at 523 Main St., it seemed like a good investment. My focus on addressing the needs of the local residents was what my landlord apparently admired, unlike many of the other landlords, who only see dollar signs. To some of them, this economy thing is just minor hiccup in their portfolio development. I hate to break the news to them, but people live and work here and when that connection gets broken between the residents and the businesses that are supposed to be supplying the means to stay alive here, don’t be surprised to also see a decrease in charitable donations and volunteerism.

Downtown has enormous potential for servicing its local population, but those in power seem to disagree with me. They only worry about resident participation in this business model when their main source of income (tourism) starts to dry up. That snub to the local residents, I contend, is what has created the rift in resident support; they still can’t feed and clothe their families with tourist trinkets, no matter how many “Shop on the Coast” programs we have.

I think this recession may be a good thing for Downtown because it may provide that long needed opportunity for decision makers to rethink their myopic business plan and flush the old one out to sea and leave it there. The businesses which seem to be hit the least by all this are the resident serving ones (Safeway, Ocean Shore) and that, I contend, should be the CRUX of our business model, not the dregs. Whoever takes the reigns of Oasis has the opportunity to take it to its next level, despite the economy, but the residents’ perception of Downtown as being able to service many of their needs is really up to those who are currently driving it into the ground.

Me? My thoughts are about taking care of my parents at the moment. Someone else has to carry the torch.

Letter: Oasis Natural Foods will close unless a buyer is found

That HE is me, and my successes have been the many people I have been able to help out within a venue such as this. I have made many friends in the process.

In case anyone hasn’t been paying attention, we are still in a steep recession, if not on the verge of a depression. I stated my letter the way I did, not to oversell it’s potential in this difficult time to some starry-eyed health food groupie, but to hopefully find some way to keep that facility being able to service the community while having them feel comfortable in the acquisition.

Editorial: Why not try a little calm and solidarity?

I found this interesting site, which appears to have some seemingly contradictory information. More grist for the mill. http://ceres.ca.gov/planning/pzd/1998/subd_4_5.html

Letter: New information on low flying aircraft into HMB Airport

I kinda like the idea of a paintball gun, myself. I think the sound of a harmless “THUNK” on the underside sends a nice message, but beside the paint probably not sticking to the finished surfaces of the aircraft, they’d probably call in Homeland Security and 40 other doughnut chomping agencies and put the Coastside under a terrorist alert.

Letter: New information on low flying aircraft into HMB Airport

Is there any particular day or time that is worse, like Sunday afternoons, perhaps? I’d like to see this for myself.

I did my flying in Korea and the East Coast and have never flown here in Half Moon Bay, but here’s what I’ve got on the topic. Maybe someone more familiar can shed some light as to why pilots find it necessary to fly so low.

Here’s the county’s website for the Half Moon Bay Airport. http://www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/smc/department/dpw/home/0,,5562541_5562589_10266848,00.html

The available length to take off and land a small plane is roughly 4200 to 5000 feet, and depending on which figures you use, a Cessna 172 can get airborne in roughly 900 to 1600 feet of that. With any good headwind, those distances could be shortened considerably.

Letter: New information on low flying aircraft into HMB Airport

Well, two things come to my mind, anyway; either the County is just doing the typical administrative foot dragging ........ OR, as I thought after reading Babbara’s piece, might there be some who are intentionally at work to keep the airport’s operating plan from being brought up to date ........ like, for developmental reasons?

In response to “living next to an airport and complaining about the noise”, I doubt that those people who had moved into that area around the airport would have had any reason to expect that the air traffic was soon to include a raft of corporate jets taking people to the Ritz for cocktails. It appears that, while the rest of the world is having to come to grips with global warming, this group is depending on everyone else to “do their part”.

Letter: New information on low flying aircraft into HMB Airport

I believe it was Barb Mauz who, several months ago, had given us a great explanation about the County’s reluctance to upgrade the airport operating plan in order to accommodate a higher level of build-out here on the coast before they got too many complaints and had to actually do something about it. That’s what I recall anyway.

Letter: Airliner over Montara?

..... and as a follow up to Jackson Robertson’s comment, you’d think at least SOMEONE would have been notified since the backwash of a plane that size could have easily disrupted the airspace of the many small aircraft that normally frequent the HMB airport. I mean how would it look if you were coming down the coast to do a touch-n-go at the HMB airport with your Cessna at 60 mph and from out of nowhere, this 747 creeps up behind you at no less than 200 mph? 

Planes that size, like large ships, should get out to open space ASAP.

HMB loses $36 million judgement

It’s a mess, for sure, and one I’m still trying get a grasp of. What I don’t understand is that after the first map expired in 1990 and the City issued its vesting tentative map, it’s my understanding that the Coastal Commission was still in control of the permitting process, such that by 1993, a full three years before the city took over that responsibility, Yamagiwa should have had no realistic expectations that any development would take place, unless she was counting on greasing the project through some legal slight of hand. At $12,000 per lot in 1993, who wouldn’t try to snag that as a potential investment opportunity?

The problem is that, at the time of her purchase, I don’t see any realistic expectation that the Coastal Commission would change its stand on wetland assessment (a gamble, maybe), and unless she had some inside informational track on HMB acquiring its own permitting process some three years later, how could anyone rightly expect this investment to actually pay off?

The whole thing reeks of caveat emptor. Now she wants to have her cake and eat it too. I can’t see it. If anything, toss her a $2 million bone and put her butt on the next train. HMB should have said that it would approve the development pending a court ruling on Beachwood’s non-conformity to Bolsa Chica. Now, it appears that the Coastal Commission has left HMB holding the bag.

If anyone wishes to clarify this, dive right in. I’m still a newbie, here.

Does the public have a right to use Shelter Cove in Pacifica?

I became involved in this issue back in New England, when day visitors would come onto a members-only beach. As a board director for one of those private facilities, such as the one mentioned in the Stinson Beach article, it was incredibly frustrating. Since security guards prohibited them from accessing our facility itself, for a number of reasons, including individual unit security, these day visitors would then defecate in the sand dunes, almost expecting us to provide them with their own rest room.

As far as enforcement within a citizen’s littoral and riparian rights, no one could conveniently establish where the high tide line was. Legally, for us, we would have had to engage an extensive engineering study to ascertain the average high tide values over a metonic cycle of roughly 18.6 years. I’m not sure what California uses as this basis, since all states (except Florida) have territorial control out to their three mile limit and there are a variety of legal interpretations of the term “High Water”, but this right to access between the high and low water lines has been an integral part of Justinian Law for almost 2,000 years.

It was an impossible situation. It isn’t that dissimilar to the article elsewhere on Coastsider about mountain bikers being denied access in La Honda. As with any user group, there are both responsible and irresponsible users, and unfortunately the irresponsible element usually spoils it for everyone. They think the world is somehow one big personal ash tray or, as was the case back east, they would defecate in the dunes where small children would often play, leave used diapers and beer cans on the beach, and think nothing of having a drunken football game on a crowded beach where they’d be stepping on other people’s beach blankets and spraying sand on others as they ran. On the other hand, we also saw people who used the beach and meticulously cleaned up after themselves, and no one really minded their presence. So it is no wonder why some resident groups try to exclude the public, because there is no way to legislate common sense and courtesy. I think, somewhere in that almost 2,000 years, the line between having functional access to the ocean for reasons of agriculture, sustenance, or commerce, and partying on the beach with little regard for others, has become seriously blurred.

Here is an excerpt of the boundary complexities: http://books.google.com/books?id=kAlTYrgMHpQC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=justinian+law+high+tide&source=web&ots=rNu3nwbiyZ&sig=5lptthN9qoi5WuoNVo2sx5p0Pp0#PPA176,M1

In section 7-3, “Boundaries of Public Trust Waters” (pg 176) are listed variations in different states’ interpretations, but unless the beach has been restricted for national security reasons or whatever, people, whether responsible or irresponsible, are generally entitled to use that littoral corridor. After that, the big issue becomes restriction of either pedestrian access or vehicular parking for those areas.

Frank Long

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