City will add agriculture to Boys and Girls Club lease

Comment 1 by Mary Bordi  on  Jun 21  at  11:09am  •  All my comments • 

Good to see you giving us updates on this Barry. To your comment that

City hall staff is continuing to investigate whether changing the use of the land to agriculture would require a coastal development permit.

Jimmy Benjamin’s Jun 20, 06, 2:20 am, comment in a related article http://coastsider.com/comments/1568010C/ suggests to me that a permit would be required because the intensity of the land use has changed.

In the above referenced comment Mr. Benjamin said

When a use is terminated (I believe the period is six months, but I would need to check our LCP), a permit to resume the use is required, and the use must conform to legal standards in effect at the time the permit is requested.

Sounds to me that, even if the land had been farmed in the past, it would still be a change of use if the farming took place longer than six months ago.

I wonder how much of the so called support of agriculture on the the coast is just lip service to appeal to the urban population. I am not necessarily speaking of agriculture within the city limits of HMB, but on the whole coast.

It’s interesting to see how things change and traditional uses may no longer conform to legal standards because those standards changed.

Folks: Attend those meetings! As Mr. Benjamin states in a further comment in the above referenced article

I agree with you that future changes in law are difficult to predict, and citizens should keep up with them. I was one of the very few citizens at the early-90’s LCP amendment public hearing asking about the impacts of the proposed LCP update.

We should all attend these hearings and make certain our point of view is represented.

This is appalling.

I’m a big supporter of B & G’s Club, I want to get the thing built — but what they did to the Sewer Plant Road site was stunningly bad.

You need a CDP to even mow out there. I know, because I was actually TRYING to get the city to mow out there, in part because of my interest in keeping the site viable for the B & G Club. We were working on getting a CDP to mow out there. But the B&G Club went ahead without any permit.

And they didn’t just mow without a CDP, they SCRAPED the place.

Jeez. If I owned a house and leased it out, and the tenants decided one day to just take out a wall without asking me, I’d kick them out.

The Council, though, didn’t do that. It asked the city to look into EXPANDING the city’s lease with the B&G Club to include agriculture.

That’s like walking into your leased home, seeing the rubble of a wall littering your living room floor and saying, hmm, you didn’t want that wall there? Gee, I understand. Let me buy you a carpet big enough to cover both rooms’ floors. It’ll look a lot better that way.

David Cline,- realtor involved with the Certificates of Compliance, sewer permits, transfers of water permits and lot-line adjustments which began the development of the Ocean Shore Railroad Right of Way. How does anyone try to justify that type of “grading” of a property which is only leased from the City? It is always easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission which would require a biological assessment of the site. lani ream

Comment 4 by Barry Parr  on  Jun 21  at  4:19pm  •  All my comments • 

Mary: I don’t know the law, but it seems reasonable to me to require a CDP to begin farming land that hasn’t been farmed in more than ten years, and probably much longer. Long enough ago that even the land’s owner and lessee cannot say when it happened last.

If you favor open space on the Coastside, you have to favor making it easy for farmers to earn a living from their land.

But this is not some crazy eco-twit hardship being imposed on a struggling farmer. The B&G Club doesn’t even consider agriculture anything more than a nice summer activity for the kids. They plan to develop the property. The permitting process will assure that this is done correctly.

The B&G Club is saying that all you have to do to tear up unused land for planting is to put up a sign for ten days. It’s not inconsistent with support of agriculture to require a permit in cases like this.

There is no doubt in my mind that David Cline, realtor and omnipresent gadfly, knew exactly what he was doing. He’s read the papers and witnessed the brouhahas over mowing and grading and no doubt remembers discussions between the City, the Department of Fish and Game and the Fish and Wildlife Service over the likely wetland footprint. He did it because he knew he could get away with it with the new council majority.

To set a good example of the member of the B&G club, he ought to come clean and pay the cost of cleaning up the site, rather than ducking his responsibility.

Deborah Ruddock

I have known David professionally for many years. He is extremely thorough and dilligent. Anything he gets involved in is completely researched. In fact, I have teased him several times about how thick his files are on his projects.

I can also tell you that what was described about a conversation with a staff person is consistent with my own experience. And this is true whether you are dealing with SM County or HMB.

You can talk to one person one day about a specific property and get one answer. Another day you may talk to a different person and hear something completely different. This is more than frustrating when we are trying to help our clients (either buyers or sellers) and you can’t get consistent straight answers to simple questions.

Our community is lucky to have someone like David who has volunterred his time for years to try and build the Boys & Girls Club. If we critize people who are helping to make this a better place, we will deter them from doing community service.

Steven Hyman

Comment 7 by Mary Bordi  on  Jun 22  at  10:26am  •  All my comments • 

Recently I came across a pamphlet on the SM County website titled Guide to Creek & Wetland Project Permitting. It’s available for download from the SM Co documents page: http://www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/smc/department/home/0,,5557771942029312313326,00.html

Or the direct link to the pdf file is: http://www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/vgn/images/portal/cit_609/10147807crk&wet.pdf

You’ll find very helpful information in this little publication, even if all you get out of it is “wow, what a convoluted process!”

Among the “practical tips for getting your project approved” is number 13, “Get everything in writing.”

I did not think of this when asking about a project a few years ago (at county level). Kept getting the runaround. Got discouraged and didn’t proceed.

Has anyone any experience in “getting it in writing”? Did it work? What sorts of answers, if any, did you get?

Is this the place to ask that question? :)

Steve,

Thanks for a positive message. If David made mistakes here, I have no doubt that he will take personal responsibility for his actions.

Seems like Ms. Ruddock is going to take the role of executioner after having judged (let’s just skip jury). These actions taken with no evidence whatsoever.

As a former city official, she should know how dangerous it is to make potentially libelous comments such as these.

Time will tell if Mr. Benjamin is merely posturing in saying that he wants the Boys & Girls Club to be built, under any circumstances. I’m not buying it.

Well, let’s see now… It was a verbal proposal to an unnamed planner who gave a verbal exemption for the Boys & Girls Club to grade for pumpkin growing purposes a contaminated parcel leased from the City for the pupose of building a Club. Gosh, how many Easter Bunnies did it take to drive the bulldozer?

Steve and Brian,

If you were advising a client on land decisions, particularly one involving a parcel about which disagreements stalled earlier development, concerning a new use for which the Director of Public Works recently advised that you would need a CDP, it’s likely that you would advise the client to get contrary assurances of particular rights of development in writing, and warn them of the risks of not doing so. I’m going to adopt the positive attitude Brian thanked Steve for and assume that Mr. Cline will step up to his responsibility — as Brian might might say, time will tell.

I ask that you consider the undisputed report (this is the evidence, Brian): When asked about the matter, Mr. Cline justified his action with the assurance of an City official he will not name, offering uncorroborated verbal advice that contradicts previously received advice from the Director of Pulblic Works. You’ll have to forgive my skepticism about Mr. Cline’s tag line, “It’s all about growing pumpkins.” Maybe his financial interests have narrowed despite his history of coastside land dealings, but MANY wanna-be developers with ESHA’s on their property, or perhaps “possible” ESHA’s on their property, will be very interested in whether this Council and other authorities with responsibility for enforcing environmental and other land use law let this slip by in the good name of the Boys & Club, creating a precedent that pesky land use restrictions can graded away with a pumpkin field. I am not buying it.

Gentlemen, that is why this is a big deal. Claiming that it’s just about pumpkins will not make this go away. Retroactive declarations by a City Council that holds environmental law in contempt because it limits development will not make this go away. Angry claims that anyone who objects hates boys or girls or Boys and Girls Clubs will not make this go away.

Since you both are clearly and deeply interested in the welfare of the B&G Club, my advice is to not sully their project by brandishing it as a shield for Mr. Cline’s unfortunate decision to reject citable advice that he might not have liked in favor of claimed, unattributable, uncitable advice that was more convenient. He’s too smart not to know better. And so are you.

• Jimmy