Comments by Ken Johnson

HMB receives $5 million insurance settlement

Steven Hyman,

I don’t hear a sell out of the environment as popular! I hear of recalling some of the City Council Majority. But I usually talk to intelligent people.  But most important:

YOU wrote:

“Its getting so hard knowing who to believe these days.  There’s the Truth Squad, liars of the Coastal Commission and our own home grown Chicken Little crowd.”

Seems to be a clear statement of YOUR opinion!

Jonathan Lundell wrote: “Come on, Steve, show a little personal initiative and name one specific “lie”.”

I, Barry, Jonathan, Scott Boyd, Francis Drouillard, and Jimmy Benjamin have all been waiting on YOU!

Ken Johnson

Pants on fire

Poor Steven Hyman,

Have the ‘meds’ kicked in yet? Let them kick in. Now, seems there were 5 different people in a row who all questioned you on the same thing on the thread you would like to ignore.

YOU wrote:

“Its getting so hard knowing who to believe these days.  There’s the Truth Squad, liars of the Coastal Commission and our own home grown Chicken Little crowd.”

Seems to be a clear statement of YOUR opinion!

Jonathan Lundell wrote: “Come on, Steve, show a little personal initiative and name one specific “lie”.”

I, Barry, Jonathan, Scott Boyd, Francis Drouillard, and Jimmy Benjamin have all been waiting on YOU!

Ken Johnson

Pants on fire

Barry,

Thanks, that meets the “bright-line test”!

Ken

Pants on fire

Barry,

A bit of ‘nit-picking’, I didn’t find, when I first read at the time of the release or when I re-read the City diatribe, the word “lying” or any derivative of that word. There are far better attorneys in the background to permit the use of any key words against a targeted individual - Sarah Christie - who is professional staff and not a public figure.

Steven Hyman is the only one I have read who has used the word “lying”, “liars” or any derivative of that word.

Ken Johnson

Pants on fire

The History of Beachwood Game…
this does seem like a fun

She spent 16 years on the City Council between 1985 to 2001 AND

[I can’t forget the headline “Beachwood loses its development case in appelate court”
in August 2005! The City was aided by the California Coastal Commission ]

She rejoined the City Council in November 2005 to form a new voting majority that promptly quadrupled legal expenses with coincidentally no success in court.

Sounds like the description to Jackson Robertson’s question of “Who was on the City Council in 1991 - Didn’t they get HMB into this mess anyways?!?”

Ken Johnson

Pants on fire

Kathryn Slater-Carter,

With the double-referral of AB 1991, I hope the Senate Rules Committee will then send it on to the Senate Committee On Natural Resources And Water where it should have gone in the Assembly.

Ken Johnson

Pants on fire

Jackson Robertson,

Great question!

Let’s play: “the History of Beachwood Game”.

Who was on the City Council and voted for, in 1990, the City approved vesting tentative maps for 85 lots on the Beachwood property (25 acres) and 47 lots on the Glencree property (12 acres) AND she also voted not to proceed with an appeal of the Beachwood case this year?

Ken Johnson

Pants on fire

Steven Hyman,

YOU are not getting out of this one! This is about YOU! This will continue to be about what YOU wrote! YOU need to validate!

Jonathan Lundell wrote: “Come on, Steve, show a little personal initiative and name one specific “lie”.”

Ken Johnson

Pants on fire

Steven Hyman,

You seem to have forgotten to answer ALL the questions to you. You seem to have a short attention span problem - I’ll remind you.

Jonathan Lundell wrote: “Come on, Steve, show a little personal initiative and name one specific “lie”.”

Ken Johnson

Another bill to exempt developer from the law submitted to Assembly

Steven Hyman,

My deepest sympathy for your loss - of any credibility!

Jonathan Lundell not only pointed to your great weakness - never supporting your statements - but he stayed with the point until you had no option but to expose yourself.

Simply stated: your assertions have no there there!

Please call the ‘minders’ and tell them to send another one over to Coastsider; that you were caught in a “depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is” moment!

Ken Johnson

Another bill to exempt developer from the law submitted to Assembly

AB 1991 - SENATE: LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE. HEARING DATE: 18 June 2008. Room 112.

Just in case you are interested in writing a letter on AB 1991 and haven’t already done so.

I apologize for changing the topic.

BTW, Steve,
I guess there is something we agree on: as you wrote:

“The bottom line is that we don’t agree. And its likely we will never agree and that’s ok.”!

Ken Johnson

Another bill to exempt developer from the law submitted to Assembly

Steven Hyman,

You do a disservice to ‘your side’ by insulting the intelligence of the casual reader. By continually asserting opinion and never supporting it by fact, the reader must conclude that there is no validity to any of your statements. You assert, with seemingly a sense of pride, in not only your lack of knowledge of a subject but a sense of pride in your lack of desire to acquire a level of knowledge.

IMHO, Coastsider’s strength is that it offers any opportunity to discuss, in an intelligent manner, areas of public interest for which there is not universal agreement. You are squandering a valuable opportunity for ‘your side’ and by the weakness of your presentation making the case of your opponents!

Ken Johnson

Another bill to exempt developer from the law submitted to Assembly

Steven Hyman,

I’ll venture a solution to your query: “Its getting so hard knowing who to believe these days.”
Read the post thoroughly, analyze it, check the validity of the content, do the ‘homework’; then, please, don’t hit transmit!

Ken Johnson

Another bill to exempt developer from the law submitted to Assembly

Mike,

Seems only the CC4 didn’t believe in the strength of a City appeal.

The developer certainly didn’t believe in the strength of his case. He surrendered his $41,100,000 judgment while still retaining the property and instead accepting $18 million in exchange for the property in the City Settlement Agreement.

I guess the City Council Four have to want to win an appeal, to believe in it.

Ken Johnson

Opinion: CUSD board loads, aims at foot, prepares to pull trigger

AB 1991 - SENATE: LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE. HEARING DATE: 18 June 2008. Room 112.

Ken Johnson

Opinion: CUSD board loads, aims at foot, prepares to pull trigger

Cheri,

CUSD Board had time to vote 4-1 for AB 1991; 5-0 for merging all water districts into CCWD Thursday night; and no time to consider merging F V into a successful School District. They had time to deny Federal Funds to Farallone View and no time to correct the false information disseminated that Farallone View was not failing - corrected quietly on their web site only recently in the School Accountability Report only six months late. They have time to do the things they want to do!

Ask them and their response will be that there is no school bussing problem!

Ken Johnson

Opinion: CUSD board loads, aims at foot, prepares to pull trigger

Jonathan,

The School Board has run through all of our $35,000,000!

They are meeting ‘off the radar’ to sell off CUSD property. They want to avoid admitting that the front of the New Cunha Looks Like This.

It does seem to distract from the more important question of what does the Academic Performance really looks like compared to their claim of being a “high performing district”! I was curious about the usually discussed nine student characteristics groups charting CUSD and the County mean scores. They are linked on a quickie on CUSD.Info - ‘punch line’ - all groups end up finishing below the County average.

Ken Johnson

Opinion: CUSD board loads, aims at foot, prepares to pull trigger

CUSD support for AB1991 is a breach of the board’s fiduciary responsibility to the district! 

It would be an action to actively support the acceptance of funds, for the development of 129 new houses, that was knowingly substantially less than the cost to provide classroom space for the expected number of children!

Opposition to AB 1991 is support for greater revenue to CUSD and to reduce the financial impacts to CUSD!

ALL FEES ARE SET AT 1990 LEVELS - this includes fees due to CUSD. A VTM, Vesting Tentative Map, effectively ‘freezes’ everything at its date. This means that the CUSD fees set on July 3, 1990 for Beachwood on 85 lots and February 6, 1990 for Glencree for 47 lots are the MAXIUMUM fees that CUSD would receive. Prior to January 1991, CUSD fees were set considerably below maximum State levels and substantially below current cost to build classroom space!

The Settlement Agreement,
Paragraph A(2)(i): “Yamagiwa shall pay all catagories of development impact fees in effect in 1990 at the time of approval of the VTMs ... No new catagories of impact fees not in effect in 1990 shall be applicable or imposed.”

AB 1991:
SEC. 2.  Section 66498.10 is added to the Government Code, to read: 
(5) “Prior city approvals” means the vesting tentative map, Sub 06-88, approved by the city on July 3, 1990, for the subdivision and development into 85 lots of the 25-acre parcel designated as San Mateo County assessor’s parcel number 048-280-020 (commonly known as Beachwood), and the vesting tentative map, sub 08-88, approved by the city on February 6, 1990, for the subdivision and development into 47 lots of the 12-acre parcel currently identified by San Mateo
County assessor’s parcel number 048-280-030 (commonly known as Glencree).

Ken Johnson

Opinion: CUSD board loads, aims at foot, prepares to pull trigger

Kevin,

If you really want to see your elected School Board turn the definition of “Fact” upside down, watch Charlie Gardner and Jolanda Schreurs!

Charlie Gardner wrote :
“The fact is that there were more letters in support than opposed by a margin of almost 3-1.”

Truth: Source: Committee BILL ANALYSIS - ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT - 04/29/2008
Support: Individual letters (77)
Opposition: Individual letters (89)

Maybe poor Charlie is just mathematically ‘challenged’!

Poor Charlie also wrote:
“Meanwhile the majority will see this Bill as the best deal for our community, and the Coastal Act will still be in place after this is passed.”

Apparently Poor Charlie didn’t read any of the three Committee BILL ANALYSIS:

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
“it appears that exemptions of the scope set forth in this bill
from so many different statutes are unprecedented.  They will
no longer be unprecedented if AB 1991 passes. ”

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
“Key policy question:
passage of this bill will
nevertheless create an unwanted precedent that may undermine
the state’s legitimate role and responsibility to preserve
land in its coastal zone.”

ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
“This bill cannot prohibit future bills creating exemptions from the
state’s environmental laws from being passed and signed into
law.  It cannot guarantee that the criteria established by this
bill requiring that all three of the elements set forth be
present in order for exemptions to be granted will be followed
in the future.”

Check out the agenda for the CUSD meeting.

Pacifica School District - Agenda - Note Financial Accountability Items!

Ken Johnson

Opinion: CUSD board loads, aims at foot, prepares to pull trigger

To his credit, District Superintendent Gaskill did concede, at the 14Feb08 Board Meeting at my questioning of his statement to “retain our status as a high performing district” by pointing out that East Palo Alto and CUSD are the only Failing Districts in the County - that only the ‘White’ enrolment, 46.6%, is among those in that “retain our status as a high performing district”.

After he affirmed his statement regarding “retain our status as a high performing district” was only for the Anglo students, I was curious about how CUSD Anglo students compared to the County Anglo students as a whole!

I must now ask: how is ‘white’ performance at less than the County average ‘white’ performance “high performing”?

This may explain the crashing enrolment in CUSD.

Ken Johnson

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