Half Moon Bay Police Department data is now available on the site CrimeReports.com. The date is updated by the HMBPD nightly. It’s mapped, and can be searched and analyzed by type, date, location.
This is a big advance in access to crime information for Coastsiders.
Can there be a more thankless task than running a small sewer district? Granada Sanitary District residents are lucky to have three engaged and knowledgeable incumbents willing to serve another term on its board.
Coastsider endorses incumbents Gael Erickson, Ric Lohman, and Leonard Woren for the GSD board of directors.
In an off-year election with no other major issues on the ballot, it would be easy to neglect to vote. It’s important that you take the time on Tuesday morning to vote. Every vote matters in what will surely be a low-turnout election.
Thanks to Montara Fog, we have a video of the GSD candidate forum, where the candidates had an opportunity to introduce themselves to the community.
It’s particularly telling to compare the incumbents’ answers to the audience questions to those of the challengers. You can’t help but learn something from the incumbents, particularly from Lohman and Woren.
Griffis and McCaffrey seem unsure of why they’re there or what they’re talking about. Even the developer-friendly Half Moon Bay Review identified Griffis and McCaffrey as potential "puppets" of real estate interests.
The trouble with voting the bums out is that two of the three opposition candidates come to the race with their own baggage. Neither Bill Griffis nor Lisa McCaffrey have ever been to a GSD meeting and are recruits of the property rights faction on the coast. They would find themselves puppets in the longest running turf war on the coast – “growthers” vs. “no-growthers.” That’s too bad.
No one questions that GSD is well run and efficient. The current board is doing a good job of serving its rate payers.
Furthermore, the current GSD board is committed to making the district and the Coastide a better place to live by upgrading their infrastructure in ways that secure the environment, and by allocating recycled water to restoring streams and wetlands.
A vote for the GSD incumbents is a vote for local control, continued good management, and a sustainable Coastside.
Come discuss two access improvement projects within the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve at a public meeting held by the The San Mateo County Parks Department. The department will present conceptual plans review and comment. Park staff will be presenting the conceptual plans and discussing the projects:
Saturday October 31, 2009
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Fitzgerald Marine Reserve Main Parking Lot, California and North Lake Street
For further information please contact Senior Planner Sam Herzberg at 650.363.1823.
Coastside Film Society to screen a film about love across a cultural divide this Friday.
"A beautiful and bittersweet film, a coming-of-age tale that simultaneously gives us a small peek into the rapidly escalating clash between old and new China as the huge country races to modernize." — Don Willmott, Filmcritic.com
Ruoma is a teenage girl living in a beautiful remote region of China’s Yunnan Province, who longs for a taste of the big city. Ming is a big city boy, an amateur photographer come to take pictures of the gorgeous mountain rice fields. Before long Ming is taking pictures of Ruoma posing in her colorful Hani garb to sell to tourists. They split the take. Of course a romance is kindled, and just as inevitably that romance is challenged by their profound cultural differences.
The photography is gorgeous, full of Hani "songs, dances, and harvest rituals, all of which Ruoma takes part in with great joy. The last thing Ruoma needs, you’ll think, is to be taken away from this simple life, and yet the world encroaches." Filmcritic.com
Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, Associate Professor from San Francisco State will introduce the film and take questions from the audience.
Friday Oct. 30, at 8:00
$6.00 suggested donation
Community United Methodist Church Sanctuary
777 Miramontes; Half Moon Bay
More info at: www.HMBFilm.org
James D. Johnson is a candidate for Coastside County Water District board, and this letter was unsolicited. All candidates for Coastside offices are welcome to post letters to Coastsider. If you have any questions, email [email protected]
I moved to the Coastside from San Mateo three years ago, previously in Marin County I had worked in various roles with the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, San Anselmo Neighborhood Water Oversight Committee and the Volunteer Fire Department. Once firmly planted here, I became interested in working on our local water issues, which are key to our future as a society.
After watching the recent City Council forum and participating in MCC’s forum for a board position on the Coastside County Water District, I am perplexed by the persistence of old feuds despite statements from the candidates supporting the environment, growth Measure D, avowed adherence to Local Coastal Programs, and seeming accord with the Coastal Act.
Although the candidates exhibit civility, there is overt hostility on the periphery among those who support one candidate or another. Most of the rancor seems directed at candidates who are unambiguous in their support of sound environmental practices and strong business growth.
Being late to the fray, I prefer to focus on the problems at hand rather than nurture old grudges. I believe that many of us do not see the environment and local economic concerns as mutually exclusive and understand that we have an imminent need for competent, communicative leaders.
Many also understand that we are at a crossroads regarding how we should be governed. We have two opposing camps—not the right and the left—but between those who see only a polarized locality with friends and enemies, and those of us who believe we need to achieve a sustainable future through an open process with all of the governed, not just our friends.
In my frequent conversations with local leaders and subject area experts I detect multiple possibilities for compromises that will benefit the community, both in the near and long term. But repeatedly people have informed me that this or that person can not be trusted and represents the enemy.
The cumulative effect is a “social poisoning” that precludes open conversation and a lack of common understanding of both the challenges and opportunities we face. Forgotten in this rush to judgment are environmentally sensitive developers, supporters for sustainable business, and a local government that serves the needs of ordinary people rather than those of the special interests.
As a result, we suffer political whiplash while the long term needs for the community—e.g. planned growth that considers water shortages, coastal impact, and quality of life, disaster planning, cooperation among relevant agencies, etc.—are sidelined as our politicians bicker.
I am proud to be endorsed by the Sierra Club, Coastside Democrats and the League for Coastside Protection. While there may be issues on which we don’t see eye-to-eye, these groups’ record of concern for ordinary individuals, the environment and protection of the coast are values that I endorse and espouse.
I have met many of you in my door-to-door campaign who say you are tired of the old feud and want more than anything to see better governing. This election is as much about a change of tone as it is about policy. We need to try to find ways to move ahead, and we need this desperately.
I urge everyone to participate—ask questions, insist on answers and, please make it a point to vote on November 3rd.
James D. Johnson
October 25, 2009
You are invited to attend a meeting to learn about ideas for a proposed Marine Sanctuary Visitor Center along the San Mateo County coast. The meeting will be October 28, 2009; 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at Ocean Shore Train Depot, 110 Higgins Canyon Road, Half Moon Bay.
Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is very excited about having a stronger presence within the Coastside community, and hope the proposed Marine Sanctuary Visitor Center will reflect the unique character, beauty and natural history of this area - the seaside community and unique interface of land and sea in this northern area of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. To that end, we invite your feedback on the concepts being proposed for the Visitor Center exhibits.
The concepts have been developed by grass roots community members including educators, fishermen, merchants, restaurateurs, surfers, biologists, and design professionals—and members of the Farallones marine sanctuary’s advisory council.
Coastsider endorses Deborah Ruddock, Dan Handler, and Sofia Freer for Half Moon Bay City Council. Our reasons are simple: Half Moon Bay needs a change of government.
I know Ruddock, Handler, and Freer personally. They are qualified, smart, rational, engaged, progressive, and they know what needs to be done.
In the Twenty-First Century, communities will be valued for their open space, clean air, walkability, access to natural resources, and sustainability. Half Moon Bay has what other Bay Area cities can only dream of, and is in danger of losing what makes it a unique and desirable place to live.
There’s more to creating a successful community than making it a an easier place to do business, but that’s not what you’re hearing from the city council incumbent (Naomi Patridge) and her running mates (Allan Alifano and Rick Kowalcyk) and fellow travelers (George Muteff and Charles Hoelzel).
It’s time for a change, and you know it. And in a low-turnout election with so many candidates, every vote counts. Remember that four years ago, the city council majority turned on fewer than a dozen votes.
Your vote is needed.
Faced with a massive legal judgement, the city council had few options. Even so, they made the worst possible choice.
They committed themselves to getting a preposterously anti-environmental bill through the California state legislature.
It’s clear that a less cynical and aggressive bill could have succeeded in the legislature, but by then the legislature was hip-deep in a Republican-created budget crisis. The city had squandered its opportunity, and it had no backup plan.
It would be a mistake to reward the city council majority by allowing it to continue to run the city.
Why do you live in Half Moon Bay and not Foster City? Because you like the fog and commuting on Highway 92? Or because you value open space, wildlife, the small-town experience, and coastal access?
The city council majority declared war on the Coastal Commission, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the rest of the legal structure that keeps the Coastside sustainable.
Their position isn’t about defending private property rights, or meeting the needs of the community. It’s about them putting our shared and irreplaceable environment second to every other concern on their agenda.
Half Moon Bay is a progressive community—it voted overwhelmingly in favor of Barack Obama and other Democrats and against Proposition 8 last year.
The city council majority has the undying loyalty of the right wing element of the electorate. Is that where you stand?
Half Moon Bay should have a city council that shares its values.
If the city council had worked with the citizens, its own legislative delegation, and the environmental community—rather than Chop Keenan—in developing its legislative strategy for the settlement, there is little question that Half Moon Bay taxpayers would have been better served.
Instead, the city’s strategy was worked out in secret with the one man who had nothing to lose—a man who held a $40 million gun to the city’s head. The result was an unalloyed disaster for everyone except Chop Keenan.
The city council slipped in its ill-advised raise for its city manager into its agenda as secretly as they could. The result was a disaster as soon as Sacramento got a whiff of what they were up to.
If the Half Moon Bay City Council had worked in the open with its citizens, it could have avoided most of its outrageous blunders of the last four years.
The Half Moon Bay Review’s endorsement of two members of the majority slate, plus Deborah Ruddock, will only continue the status quo: A single progressive member (Ruddock rather than Jim Grady) isolated, bullied, and unable to get a motion even seconded when it matters. This is what led to the disastrous Beachwood settlement, over Jim Grady’s protests.
If Half Moon Bay is to be a good place to live in the future, it needs a change of government now.
I trust that one and all survived the Cavalcade of the Colossal Cucurbits, Typhoon Tuesday and the astonishing results of the great Pumpkin Weigh Off without incident or regrets. Congratulations are due once again to Ms Eda Muller on her triumph of gravitas and beauty! Ms Eda won the local division of the weigh-off doncha know, and in doing so broke a record for the county and outweighing her loving husband Farmer John’s entry by a mere 1%. All very exciting! But if you ask me, what really put her pumpkin in a league of its own is that hands down, that punkin’ was by far the prettiest orange-est, roundest, actual pumpkin-looking dang punkin’ I have ever seen make it into the gargantuan category. A Marvel to view, and while it will make for a lovely display and a fine dwelling for disavowed wives from nursery rhymes, these stunning feats of agricultural acumen taste terrible. Plus, I was told as a child never to eat anything bigger than my head, and that has always seemed like good advice.
So - what to make of all the different types of pumpkins and pumpkin-like squashes rolling into the Market these days? Muffins, for one thing, pies for another and soups are a perennial favorite. But to really appreciate the flavor and difference of fall squashes, I like to pick up a strange looking rumpledy looking thing I have never tired before and try it on for flavor, as opposed to size.
In my experimenting I have found that just about every kind of late season squash, when sauteed up with some leeks and sweet red peppers and piled over pasta with a garnish of toasted pumpkin seeds make for a really tasty, very simple and beautiful fall supper. Try this combo over Santa Cruz Pasta Co.‘s Red Pepper Paparadel and you are on to something, Elmer. It looks like a plate of fall sundown, just astonishing and gorgeous. Plus, very tasty and oh so good for you.
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