The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will take up consideration of a resolution to restrict elected officials from serving on the Midcoast Community Council [pdf].

According to the published agenda, the resolution is the first item after a proclamation at about 9:30am.

The Half Moon Bay Beautification Committee are accepting applications for their annual distribution of grants. The deadline is March 31.

Last year, $95,000 was awarded to coastside non-profits, educational organizations and municipal agencies.

Funding for the grants comes from the annual Art & Pumpkin Festival, which is organized and operated by the Beautification Committee.

To qualify for consideration applicants must complete and submit the grant request form by the March 31 deadline, show current documentation of non-profit status, and serve residents of the coastside area, from Montara to Pescadero.

The details are sketchy, but Half Moon Bay has had a new "placeholder" bill introduced by Assemblyman Jerry Hill to help cover the $18 million cost of the Beachwood settlement, reports the County Times.

"I can guarantee you for sure it’s not about building houses. My ultimate goal would be to get some financial assistance and make this a nice little rest/park area," said [HMB Mayor John] Muller of Beachwood, which is a 24-acre expanse of tall grass, trees and scrub along Highway 1.

What form that financial assistance will take is unknown, especially considering the state budget debates. [Assemlyman Jerry] Hill said it might be possible to appropriate some new funds, but Muller said the city was much more likely to succeed at tapping into an existing bond with set-aside monies for a cause such as building a community park.

State Senator Leland Yee is also on board. Yee’s withdrawal of support played a significant factor in scuttling AB1991, the city’s first try at getting some relief. Because this has been introduced an an urgency measure, it will require a two-thirds vote to pass.

The county has stated that they will still accept public comments on the Facilites Plan, although the February 20th date specified as the deadline, has passed.  Copies of the plan are available here on Coastsider, on Montara Fog, and via the county at http://www.sforoundtable.org/pdf/BigWave/project.pdf (a very long download).

If you have not already commented please don’t hesitate to do so.  Planner is Camille Leung [[email protected]]

Saturday, February 28, 2009
Workshop from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
At the Train Depot, 110 Higgins Canyon Road, Half Moon Bay

Please join us for an exciting workshop led by Alvaro Jaramillo, local biologist, life-long birder, eco-tour guide to the Americas, and author of Field Guide to the Birds of Chile and New World Blackbirds. Come learn about the Coastside birds of prey: hawks, eagles, falcons, kites and owls. Study field marks, behavior, ecology and migratory patterns. Find out how to tell them apart and where to locate them. Light refreshments will be served.

Wavecrest Bird Walk from 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Meet at Smith Field at the end of Wavecrest Road, Half Moon Bay

Come stroll through this beautiful bluff top open space, lead by Alvaro Jaramillo and Gary Deghi, HMB wildlife biologist, environmental consultant and Sequoia Audubon board member. Apply your workshop skills and identify birds and other wildlife. Warm beverages and cookies will be served at the end.

Suggested donation for Workshop: $15, seniors $5, under 18 free.
Wavecrest Bird Walk: free. Bring binoculars, dress in layers and wear sturdy shoes.

For more information:
office: 650.284.5056
[email protected]
coastsidelandtrust.org

Send us your letters regarding Big Wave that you have sent to the county Planning Department. We’ll share them with the community.

Dear Planning Manager Leung

It is in the nature of a good professional planner to also be a Visionary, with the ability to look beyond the noise made by a few in the present, towards the needs of the Whole in the future.

Our Coastside is a Precious Jewel, not only for those of us who have chosen to live here in relative inconvenience and isolation, but to the rest of the people of San Mateo County, California, the United States of America, and all the countries of the World.

I meet people—ON A DAILY BASIS!—from around our state, country and world, who marvel at the beauty and ACCESSIBILITY of our little San Mateo County Coast, its beaches, hiking trails and lovely little businesses and restaurants. They tell me how wonderful their experience is to find such a place. They take back with them a memory that is often the unexpected high point of their vacation. And, they spend money and tell others what a great place this part of the California coast is for a vacation.

I simply don’t understand what purpose the Big Wave serves in the larger scheme of things, other than to put more money into the developers’ pockets. My own first cousin, Joan, has Downs Syndrome, a developmental disability. She utilizes a sheltered workshop situation and it seems to have improved the quality of her life. But, such work areas are best situated into, and spread out among, the larger community, so that the DD person can have the experience of MAINSTREAMING INTO the larger community, and NOT BE SET APART in a living/working/shopping area that will further emphasize their differences. It has long been understood in the field of human services that DD people, for their own happiness and fulfillment, should be integrated into the community as much as possible, not separated into concentrated communities consisting mainly of themselves.

Who are the developers really thinking of here? Not the DD people, who would be, essentially, institutionalized with decreased ability to share in the life of the greater Peninsula and Bay Area communities.  Not the accessibility of other San Mateo county residents to the Coastside. Not the people of the Coastside who need to get to and from work each day. Not the safety of all Coastside residents, DD and "normal", who would find it that much more impossible to evacuate in the face of a disaster. Not the many tourists, who would eventually learn to avoid this stretch of Highway One and take their dollars instead to Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. Not the residents of Greater San Mateo County, who look upon the Coastside, rightly, as their little place to "get away from it all" and have a few hours to a few days of accessible respite and renewal.

Please look into the future of San Mateo County. Please do not let a few greedy developers ruin one of the last best places on Earth.  Please serve the citizens of, not only the Coastside, but all of San Mateo County. Please take the long view - the one that is ultimately wiser, healthier for all citizens of San Mateo County, and more socially acceptable as well. Please do not let short-sighted greed over-develop the San Mateo County coastal areas.

Respectfully submitted

Susan Christine, M.A., MFT
Montara

Drought made California in the 1840s a dusty and desolate backwater, writes Gaye Lebaron in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

There was no land suitable for agriculture anywhere around the pueblo of Sonoma, [Lt. Charles Wilkes] wrote in his report. And the Sacramento Valley was no more than a "barren wasteland."

Wilkes, you see, had the bad luck to arrive in California in the year 1841, which was a drought year in this area of such significant proportions as to change the course of history.

I raise this issue now because it looks like the course of history may wobble, or at least bend a bit, in subsequent months. We’ve had rain, but the experts tell us that 2009, like 1841 and a dozen or more years since, will be recorded as another drought year. ...

Certainly the population couldn’t drink enough to matter. There was only a Presidio, nothing more, in San Francisco. Northern California was divided into large (I mean 40,000-acres large) land grants.

[John] Bidwell, traveling south, estimated there were 200 people in Santa Barbara, 250 in Los Angeles and 150 in San Diego. He may have missed a few, since estimates for Mexico’s Alta California in the 1840s placed the population at about 80,000. But there were still a lot fewer water drinkers, lawn-waterers and driveway-hosers than today’s 36 million-plus.

Still, there had not been enough rain to go around. In another recollection, Bidwell wrote about the "parched earth" that blew out of his hand and about the "total failures" of corn and grain crops.

ONE OF THOSE significant failures altered the destiny of our North Coast. If we had had a little more rain that winter, John Sutter might have been able to pay the departing Russians for Fort Ross. As it happened, Sutter had three successive years of crop failures and couldn’t pay the Russians the $5,000 worth of wheat he owed them in ‘41 and ‘42, or the $10,000 in wheat and produce that was due in ‘43, which Bidwell described as "dryest year I’ve ever known, in fact it was almost rainless."

Things got ugly at the last Midcoast Community Council meeting, where Big Wave’s developer discussed the project’s draft Facilities Plan, but refused to answer other questions from the community on other topics.

You can watch the complete video on Montara Fog.