Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Video: HMB City Council releases full due diligence report, doesn’t kill park yet

Updated posted by Barry Parr on Jun 06, 2007 at 11:44 am in Government Video
2 comments • Click to email this story

Darin Boville

Click to open a video of the special meeting in a new window.

Click to download a copy of the 39-page report [PDF, 17MB], or CLICK HERE for a version with the redactions highlighted [PDF, 3 MB].

UPDATE: Thanks to a reader with more Acrobat skills than me, we now have a much smaller version of the due diligence report, with the redacted portions highlighted—only 3 MB! We’ve also added the QuickTime of the special meeting.

Late Tuesday night, after declining to decide one way or another on the fate of the Pilarcitos Creek park site, and after most the audience had gone to bed, the Half Moon Bay City Council voted to release an unredacted version of the due diligence report on purchasing the former Nurseryman’s Exchange site for a park.CLICK to download the full due diligence report from Coastsider.

The pages to look at first are: 4, 16 - 19, 21-22, and 35, which city attorney Adam Lindgren told the council to read at 10:15 before the break and before deciding whether to release the document.

Video of special meeting [80 min] | QuickTime | Flash | We will post QuickTime of the special meeting, and video of the regular meeting, as it becomes available.

SINCERE THANKS: I was speaking at a publishing conference in Washington, DC on Tuesday when I found out that the city council had called a special meeting at 5:00 pm that day. We would not have the due diligence report or our upcoming video of both the special and regular city council meetings without the speedy response and hard work of Darin Boville and Dana Kimsey. Citizen journalism really only works when the entire community is involved. If you think Coastsider is missing important events in the community, we’d love to see you contribute.

SARCASTIC “THANKS”: To the Half Moon Bay City Council for calling two vital meetings (one of them a workshop) with the absolute minimum of notice: posting a note on the side of City Hall 24 hours before the meeting. And for calling the meeting at 5pm, when no working person could attend.

Comments

Comment 1 by Suzanne Black on Jun 06 at 12:31pm • All my comments •

Thanks for posting this so quickly, Barry!

Comment 2 by Barry Parr on Jun 07 at 12:30pm • All my comments •

Having read the due diligence report a couple of times while highlighting the redactions, I have to tell you that I don't know what all the fuss is about.

I can understand why folks like Larry Kay or George Muteff would profess to be frightened about what must be in the document. After all, they haven't seen it. But I'm surprised that Bonnie McClung and Marina Fraser would speak about this report as if they knew some dark secret about the park and then release what looks like a pretty routine list of caveats, almost all of which have been aired publicly.

The one surprise for me is that the city attorney said that the site could not be used as a corporation yard. What's interesting here is that (1) even if true, it doesn't affect the site's suitability for a park except perhaps to increase it, and (2) the current city council majority clearly doesn't agree because they've been using it as a corporation yard for the last 18 months.

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