The public is invited to attend a meeting of the Sanctuary Advisory Councils for San Francisco-based Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.  For more information on the Sanctuary Advisory Councils, please visits: http://farallones.noaa.gov/manage/sac.html and http://montereybay.noaa.gov/intro/advisory/advisory.html.

For more information on the Gulf of the Farallones and the Monterey Bay national marine sanctuaries please visit: http://farallones.noaa.gov/ and hyttp://montereybay.noaa.gov/

Agenda after the jump.

About 150 Coastsiders showed up for a meeting to discuss recreation in Rancho Corral de Tierra after it becomes part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, reports the County Times.

Nearly 200 locals have signed Bechtell’s petition to set aside some land for dogs to roam free once it comes under public management, but Bechtell says he isn’t optimistic given the federal agency’s history of enforcing leash laws in areas where there previously were none.

Parks officials wouldn’t comment on specifics, since they are just beginning to draft a management plan and environmental impact statement, which won’t be ready for implementation until 2011.

A tentative outline of the plan, presented last week at the meeting, would divide the property into two zones. There would be a rural uplands zone with trails for horses, hikers and mountain bikers, along with the possibility of a new hiking trail connecting Rancho Corral de Tierra with Montara Mountain through property owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. ...

Nothing may get done for several years, considering the Peninsula Open Space Trust has attached a $15 million sale price to Rancho Corral de Tierra, and federal legislators have appropriated only $1.96 million toward that goal so far.

The dog-walking issue will likely not be resolved until 2012 or later because it is being dealt with as part of a separate dog-management plan that will establish a bureaucratic process for analyzing which dog areas can remain off-leash, according to GGNRA spokeswoman Chris Powell.

Two small park zones in San Francisco allow off-leash dog use under a 2006 court order; the GGNRA was sued in 2000 by dog owners after enforcing a ban on off-leash dog walking that had long been on the books.

Many of those mountain lions, which seem to be spotted more and frequently, may in fact be bobcats, reports the County Times.  In the desert, female mountain lions have a range of about 32,000 acres and males about 64,000 acres (100 sq miles).

However, territories in San Mateo County are smaller because food sources are more readily available, Roessler said.

Animals seen in several recent sightings may have been bobcats, which "seem to be less shy" and "get acclimated to people and neighborhoods," even cozying up on porch chairs, she said.

Bobcats outnumber mountain lions in San Mateo County, and may be the actual source of most mountain lion reports, she said.

Lions "need big ranges, and if you look at that, the Santa Cruz Mountains themselves wouldn’t provide much habitat except for a few lions," Roessler said. "If that’s the situation, then the reports we get are either inaccurate or people are seeing the same lion over and over again."

One possible reason for mountain lions being spotted in residential areas could be that they are young, have just been pushed away from their mothers, and are attempting to establish their territory, Roessler said.

In recent years, animals thought to have been mountain lions have turned out to be bobcats, coyotes or raccoons, say police in Half Moon Bay, Daly City, South San Francisco and Millbrae.

Earlier, Darin Boville suggested that a recent mountain lion sighting near Seal Cove was probably a bobcat.

Dear Mayor Muller and Council-members,
I am a 14-year resident of Half Moon Bay and retired business executive.  I have followed developments in the Beachwood matter and it seems clear that we are on the brink of discovering whether we can continue our normal Coastal lifestyle, in the City that we all love, or whether we are destined to be a bankrupt entity, with the stigma and financial stresses that are manifest in such an event.  I am a homeowner and I have little desire to see my home value decline, nor experience the loss of services and other negative impacts that would result from a City-filed bankruptcy.  I am sure that all responsible Half Moon Bay residents share these feelings.

Absent any fairy dust coming our way from either Sacramento or Washington, despite the large amounts being generated for other needs, it seems that we are on our own to resolve our situation.  "Our situation" is not only the Beachwood matter, but also the significant shortfall in budgeted operating revenues, already announced as $920,000, but which I suspect will creep much higher ($1,500,000?) given the stagnant state of the economy.  It could be, that on an annualized basis, we find ourselves $2,500,000 - $3,000,000 in the hole (half for the Beachwood settlement under the existing terms and half for the operating shortfall, in conservative round figures); at least we need to prepare contingency plans for such an eventuality, which I know that the City government is doing under the Council’s direction.  This potential $3,000,000 shortfall constitutes about 25% of the City’s 2008/2009 fiscal year budget (balanced on paper at $11.65 million) - a daunting prospect.

The budget document is a comprehensive booklet, but its utility is compromised by events.  No one could have predicted the economic meltdown that has overcome the nation and indeed the world, but the assumptions in the budget, in our own little backyard, seem surreal:
 

 

• No contingency plan for paying the Beachwood settlement; just a hopeful reliance on AB1991;

 

• Optimistic economic forecasts, including increased revenues from such forecasts (+10.5% over the previous year);

 

• Increased total spending, up about 5% (with total personnel costs up 12%, including 3% across-the-board pay increases for all personnel);

 

• Police services expenditures up 10.4%.

 

All in all, when Beachwood was looming and real, let alone the standard need for prudent budgeting, the budget represents a remarkably cavalier attitude.

There will be a special meeting of the Midcoast Community Council tonight to discuss the Big Wave project in El Granada.  The meeting will be at 6pm at Granada Sanitary District meeting room, 504 Avenue Alhambra, El Granada [Google map].

This is an important meeting because the deadline for comments to the county is February 20. Take a few minutes to watch the video below about this major project by Neil Merrilees and Darin Boville.

This remarkable video does a better job than any environmental impact report of explaining the scale of the proposed Big Wave development, and what its impact will be on the neighborhood and the Coastside as a whole. It concludes with some thoughtful examples from Neil Merrilees of well-thought-out and properly located projects of a similar nature. The video was produced by Darin Boville for Montara Fog.

Watch the video, come to the MCC tonight. Comments should be emailed to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), who is the county planning department project manager for the Big Wave proposal.

If you have time, I also recommend watching the James Howard Kunstler video below, which deals with some similar questions.

"When we have enough places that are not worth caring about, we will have a nation that is not worth defending."—James Howard Kunstler

I’ve mentioned in the past that my view of development and community has been strongly influenced by Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere.Take 20 minutes to watch Kunstler’s take on the Tragedy of Suburbia. Kunstler is not only right, he’s incredibly funny.

Kunstler introduced many Americans to "New Urbanism" and "Smart Growth".  The Tragedy of the Coastside is that these terms are being used to promote projects that are the opposite of what they mean. Watch this video, and think about projects like Wavecrest, Beachwood, or Peeble’s Pacifica Quarry. Ask yourself what kind of community their promoters have in mind for us.

"Golden Lands, Golden Opportunity", a new report from San Francisco’s Greenbelt Alliance and the Bay Area Open Space Council, urges more and better protection of Bay Area land from misuse, reports the Chron.

The giant green corridor envisioned in the report would not mean commerce or private business would cease. The 100,000-acre coastal dairy belt in Sonoma County, vineyards in Napa and fertile farmland in Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Solano and Marin counties would be protected.

Trails linking 47 cities in the nine Bay Area counties would also be funded, including the 500-mile Bay Trail and the Carquinez Strait Scenic Loop. In San Francisco, a 13-mile corridor along the southeastern waterfront known as the Blue Greenway would bring recreation to an underserved area of the city.

Watersheds along the San Mateo and Santa Clara county coasts, urban parks in Alameda and the 470,000 acres of redwood forests and woodlands in Sonoma County would be protected under the plan.

The goals outlined in the report are to make sure all Bay Area residents have a park within a 10-minute walk of their home, to improve urban parks and to create transit connections.

High-priority lands would either be purchased or placed under conservation easements. Farmers and other land stewards would be given the support and resources needed to take care of the land and sell locally farmed products.

Strong land-use policies would be enacted in every Bay Area city, according to the report. That would mean establishing urban growth boundaries especially in Solano and Contra Costa counties, where suburban sprawl threatens open space.

The Boy with the Incredible Brain, a sensitive and enlightening documentary about highly functioning savant Daniel Tammet, will be presented by The Visionary Edge at 7:30 pm, Saturday, February 7th at The Johnson House Train Depot in Half Moon Bay. 

The film is the breath-taking story of the astonishing arithmetic and language capabilities of Daniel Tammet.  Born January 31, 1979 to a working-class parents in London, he was one of nine children. The film shows scientists testing his ability to recite Pi to 22,500 decimal points, as well as learning the Icelandic language in one week. Tammet, in his gentle unassuming way, passes all the tests and offers this concluding statement about the phenomenon of savants: "The line between profound talent and profound disability is a surprisingly thin one."

Though a savant, Daniel Paul Tammet has none of the apparent disabilities which keep most savants from functioning as normal, independent adults.  Many cases of savantism are triggered by accidents which leave behind brain damage; Daniel’s skills date from an epileptic fit when he was a young child.