A reader pointed out to us that Google’s amazing and disturbing new Street View works covers the Coastside from Highway 1 down to Highway 92 [click on Hwy 1 to see the view]. They managed to catch us on a sunny day. Unlike their remarkable photos of, say, San Francisco, I think their camera-buggy was moving pretty fast, so there’s a lot a blur in many views. But it’s still pretty cool. And creepy.

There’s a good article in the County Times on Half Moon Bay’s unique approach to park planning. Nothing new, but it’s as close to an outside perspective as you’re going to get on this issue.

The Coastside Edible Garden Club encourages its members to learn where their food comes from, and how to grow it themselves, reports Julia Scott in the County Times.

Growing food on the coast is not always bountiful. Montara’s foggy days and cool nights make growing tomatoes impossible, as O’Brien discovered a few years ago. The couple has eaten fewer tomatoes as a result, allowing their diets to flow with the seasons: Chard and other greens sauteed with garlic in the winter; roasted carrots, potatoes and beets in the fall; baked squash and zucchini in the summer, followed by plump homegrown strawberries for dessert.

Slightly south of Montara, El Granada’s warmer microclimate enables Melinda MacNaughton to grow tomatoes, pumpkins, sunflowers and other warmer-weather crops. The 38-year-old mother, a registered dietitian, joined the Edible Garden Club a year and a half ago with the goal of growing her own nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables.

It’s very enlightening and encouraging. Except the part about tomatoes in Montara. That’s depressing.

Dr. John Bayless, superintendent of Cabrillo Unified School District, is retiring in the fall.  The board will begin its search in the summer and Bayless says that it should be complete by early fall.

You can download from Coastsider the superintendent’s letter and the letter from the school board describing his accomplishments over his decade of service at CUSD, including implementation of state standards, strategic plan, remodeling and building at all district schools and a record number of new grants.

The history of the Pilarcitos Creek park site can be confusing, unless you're one of the few dozen people who've been following it closely. And it doesn't help that the story has more subplots than the Sopranos. We put together a timeline of all the significant events in Half Moon Bay's history with the site to help you understand the process that got us here, and the time scale over which it took place.

Each event below is linked to a story on Coastsider or the Half Moon Bay Review, so you can read it for yourself. However, I'm not sure either site is a definitive source on this matter. I've always believed the park was a great thing for Half Moon Bay, and the Review's coverage has been unrelentingly negative. My all-time favorite Review headline: "City's 3 million parkland purchase upsets widow".

Twice in one week, the Half Moon Bay City Council held important special meetings on the Pilarcitos Creek park site with the absolute legal minimum notice. They posted an agenda on the side of City Hall 24 hours before the meeting was to be held. There are two important issues here—the timing and the location of the notice.

To quote the Half Moon Bay Review, writing about an earlier city council:

Why not post notice of meetings where someone might actually see it? Does the city have something to hide?
...
The answers, respectively, are that we don’t know and that we don’t think so.

There is another possible explanation. You can’t really hide anything by holding a snap public meeting, but you can keep the amount of public participation to a minimum. And you may be able to cloud the record. MCTV was unable to tape either special meeting, and Coastsider came close to missing them as well.

And let’s be clear: posting the agenda to the city’s web site—the digital equivalent of the bulletin board on the side of city hall—is also insufficient.  The County Coastside Water District emails meeting notices to anyone who asks to be put on the list.  On June 8, I received a email from CCWD about a special meeting to be held on June 12.

In the meantime, be sure to stop by the city hall parking lot after 5 every evening. You might miss something if you don’t.

In a couple of marathon sessions on Tuesday, the Half Moon Bay City Council held a special meeting on the park site at Pilarcitos Creek, took extensive testimony from the public, decided to release the due diligence report on the park site, and considered its budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year.

We’ve already released the video of the special meeting, held in a tiny room in Adcock center and continued in the large meeting room, but are repeating it here so everything is together in one story. Related material in the regular meeting video are additional oral communications, the city attorney’s discussion of the redacted portions of the due diligence report, and the budget discussion.

You can download a copy of the due diligence report with the now-unredacted portions highlighted in red [pdf 3MB] from Coastsider.

Special meeting [80 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  |

Oral Communication (note: we lost some of the oral communications due to technical problems) [28 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  |

Council reports [4 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  |

Staff reports [26 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  | Docs |

Consent calendar [5 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  |

City attorney on whether to release unredacted version of due diligence report [8 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  |

Tsunami warning system and PG&E window closing in HMB [29 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  |

Introduction of 2007-08 budget [71 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  | Docs |

Storm drainage legislation [7 min]  | Quicktime | Flash  |

NOTE: This opinion piece by Barry Parr appeared in Wednesday’s Review. You can read the full story on the Review’s site.

They say real life is a lot like high school.

The current scuffle over the playing fields at Half Moon Bay High certainly has all the elements of high school: jocks vs. nerds, cliques, bullying, and lots of folks who haven’t done their homework.

To bring you up to date, the high school received a generous donation to refurbish its playing fields from an anonymous millionaire whose identity everyone knows. Of course, this generosity brought the community together in a single-minded sense of gratitude and good fellowship. Sort of like a vaguely worded bequest to a beloved beagle would be received by the heirs of the decedent.

The school district - the paint peeling on the groundbreaking sign at its decrepit middle school with no actual ground having been broken - set about gilding the high school’s fields. Literally next door to this undertaking, the neighbors petitioned the district to consider the quiet enjoyment of their homes in its renovations and to keep to the project it outlined in its Coastal Development Permit. When the district ignored them, they took their petition to the city, which had issued the permit. They’re still waiting for the city to call them back.

Now, everyone knows you don’t buy a house next to a rendering plant if you don’t like the stench of lard in the morning. And you don’t buy a house next to a high school football field if you want to hold chamber music recitals in your living room on Friday nights. But if you’re an American, and don’t have an Arab name, you do expect a little due process now and then.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it this way.

Recently, I received a heavily forwarded e-mail. It included a message to sports boosters from the school’s athletic director, sent from his school e-mail account, saying: "Basically, two to three people, for totally selfish reasons, have decided to attack public school facilities. ... It is beyond me why their complaints are even being entertained, however, the scary part is, they are."

Now there’s a call to arms: Complaints are being entertained! Besides, we’ve got them outnumbered.

There are plenty of Coastsiders who patriotically protect their Second Amendment right to shoot your dog, or their Fifth Amendment right to pave a stream. But these folks are up in arms that the school’s neighbors dared to demand due process or to petition their government for redress of grievances.

The e-mail’s distribution list included many local luminaries, including a member of the school board who is known for being a reasonable person. Several folks, including the school board member, chimed in approvingly, characterizing the aggrieved neighbors as selfish for wanting their pleas to be heard. No one explained why he or she thought the neighbors’ interpretation of the district’s Coastal Development Permit was meritless. No one questioned the motives of the athletic director, the team parents or alumni sports boosters who now enjoy a brighter shade of green at their spectacles.

What do the neighbors want? I won’t bore or confuse you with the details of the dispute. We have bodies, such as the Half Moon Bay Planning Commission, whose members have volunteered their evenings to be bored and confused on our behalf. What the neighbors wanted was for someone in authority to review their complaints and suggestions and to make sure their powerful neighbor is obeying the law.

Who wouldn’t want that?

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.