On June 26 and 27, the local Coastside amateur radio ham group will participate in a 24 hour Field Day where thousands of North American hams demonstrate their emergency radio capabilities. Using radios powered by generators, batteries and other “off the grid” sources, hams will make contact with as many other hams as possible. Field Day starts at 11 am on Saturday June 26th and continues to 11 am Sunday. We typically make over 600 contacts dependent on the ionospheric conditions. 

The event will be held at the Venice Beach parking lot at the west end of Venice Blvd. in Half Moon Bay. Look for the large antennas in the north parking lot area. 

With thousands of hams on the air at one time, the airwaves get pretty crowded, making communication difficult. But the locals will still make contact with hams in almost every state, Canadian province and many other countries. 

The point of this exercise is to show the public and local officials that, when the going gets tough, hams can get the message through. But it is also a fun event demonstrating our communications skills and equipment. 

This Field Day is sponsored by the national Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL), the umbrella organization for US hams. It is held every year on the fourth weekend in June. All hams and ham clubs are invited to take part. Ham clubs in Pacifica, La Honda and many cities over the hill will likely also participate. We get points for each contact we make as well as what kind of power we use, like solar, and several other special communication features.

The Public is welcome

Even the non-licensed public can participate as long as a licensed ham is present. Hams will gladly show off their equipment, antennas and procedures. We especially like to invite the younger generation to see how much fun ham radio can be. 

Coastside hams are organized through the HMB Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), also sponsored through the ARRL and the city of Half Moon Bay. The Emergency Coordinator is David Richards.  This group holds monthly meetings at the Ted Adcock Community Center on the first Wednesday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is an on-the-air net at 8:00 pm every Wednesday using the local repeater. The frequency is 149.285 MHz, positive offset with a pl of 114.8 Hz. All hams and wanna-be hams are invited to our meetings. 

In addition to emergency communications, local hams provide help with community events including Dream Machines in April, the Pumpkin Festival in October and the Nights of Light in December. 

More ARES info can be found at:  http://areshmb.org                   

The Brothers of the Baladi have adapted Middle Eastern music, American Rock ‘Roll and styles from other cultures to create a new hybrid of World Music. The band mixes traditional songs, exotic rhythms and acoustic instruments from the Middle East with western instrumentation, familiar grooves and vocals in seven languages to create unique and highly rhythmic dance music.  Featured belly dancer, Malia.
 
Reservations: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/111922

June 27, 2010 – 4:30, $30
Douglas Beach House on Miramar Beach
307 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA  94019
650 726-4143, www.bachddsoc.org

I’m reaching out to you all as I know you care about the coast and the environment, particularly the recent horrific spill in the gulf. 

What can we do to help the Gulf?  Stand in the Sand with "Hands Across the Sand" against off shore drilling and for clean energy!

I want to invite you all to join the Montara Beach Coalition and the Pacifica Beach Coalition at Montara Beach on June 26th at 11.00am to join hands across the sands.
 
Lynn Adams of the Pacifica Beach Coalition, and myself Kevin Stokes of the Montara Beach Coalition decided to join forces and concentrate our effects on one beach for the ‘Hands Across The Sand’ gathering to oppose off shore oil drilling.

We hope to form as long a line as possible on Montara Beach, the more people the better! The plan is simple:

• Arrive at Montara State Beach (South end) on June 26 at 11 AM,
• if arriving by car (we encourage you to walk or bike) use the parking lots either side of ‘La Costanera’ restaurant.
• Gather on the South part beach
• Form lines in the sand and at 12:00, then join hands.
• The image is powerful, the message is simple.  NO to Offshore Oil Drilling, YES to Clean Energy!
• Why Montara Beach?
• The vantage place for photos there is incredible! 
• Montara Beach is one mile long and easily accessible
• To make one event bigger and better than two separate events in Pacifica and Montara

Please tell everyone you can about this event, forward this email, Tweet, Blog and use Facebook to link to the Montara Beach events page.

We are looking for photographic and video recordings of this event, if you can help please contact Kevin. If you need any questions answered please send me an email at the address below. I look forward to seeing you at the event, please tell all your friends!

Cheers

Kevin & Wendy

Montara Beach Coalition
Protect, Preserve, Enjoy

Please join us June 26, and bring your friends, neighbors, gloves and sun cream for a day of trash cleanup and non-native plant removal near Pilarcitos Creek. We’ll talk about our local flora and fauna and how we can continue to ensure the protection of open space in Half Moon Bay. We’ll trade restoration stories and share the fun of keeping the sensitive habitat areas of our town clean. 

Meet at 10 am in the parking lot of the Stone Pine office park, 120 Stone Pine Rd, Half Moon Bay

We’ll provide gloves and trash bags. Wear layers and sturdy shoes. 

Upcoming Events:

4th of July Parade - meet in front of the HMB Library, 11 am. We will pass out poppy-seed packets and carry our banner. 

July 24 - Pilarcitos Creek Bird Walk, led by Alvaro Jaramillo, 3 to 5 pm; meet behind Safeway, 70 Cabrillo Hwy N, HMB.

Jo Chamberlain
Executive Director
www.coastsidelandtrust.org

The County’s Charter Review Committee has made three recommendations for changes to the charter so rational, you’d think they’d already be the law.

• Move election of Supervisors to a district system from the current at-large system.
• Fill vacancies on the board with an election in the first two years, 9 1/2 months of a seat’s term. After that, an open seat can be filled by election, appointment, or left vacant.
• Change the offices of Treasurer-Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller to be appointed by and reporting to the County Manager. Both of these offices are currently elected positions. The change would be effective the end of the term which expires in January 2015.

The current system of at-large elections and frequent appointments has made the Board of Supervisors about as unrepresentative and unaccountable as an elected government can be.

The Committee will meet Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 5:30pm, at 455 County Center, Room 101, Redwood City to discuss these recommendations and the proposed charter amendments.

You can download the agenda and recommendations from Coastsider.

The way we elect the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors is broken. The Charter Review Committee is about to recommend single-district elections, but there’s a better solution: proportional representation.

Like most of California’s 58 counties, San Mateo’s Board of Supervisors has five members, elected from five geographic districts. But San Mateo is the only county that elects supervisors at large to single-district seats. That is, all the voters in the county vote on each seat individually.

Single-district elections aren’t the answer

A year ago, the county grand jury recommended that the county consider single-district elections, in which only the residents of a particular district would elect that district’s supervisor.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights has said that they believe "the county’s use of an at-large election system dilutes the vote of minority residents."

At-large elections are majority-take-all. A simple majority of county voters can choose all five supervisors. This leaves the rest of us with a fairly uniform board, that represents little of San Mateo County’s considerable diversity. That diversity only begins with ethnicity. It extends to most political questions that concern the Board: development, budgets, jobs, education, coastal conservation, environmental issues generally, public transit, and more.

Single-district elections won’t fix this problem. Racially gerrymandered districts depend, perversely, on a pattern of segregation, It leaves ethnic group members in other districts and non-members in the district unrepresented. And it assumes all members of an ethnic community share the same political values.

Proportional representation lets voters find common interests

Under a proportional representation system, voters form alliances to elect their own supervisors. The alliances depend on common interests, not on how district lines were drawn. The great majority of voters end up helping to elect one or more supervisors of their own choosing.

The Coastside Film Society proudly presents:

THE COVE (92 mins)

"The Cove plays like the James Bond version of an environmental doc.   
Quite simply one of the year’s best movies."  Peter Howell, Toronto Star

A documentary about a group of environmental activists attempting to expose the dark underside of the annual dolphin roundup in Japan.  Tourists flock to Taiji, the little town that hosts the roundup, to see where so many of the worlds performing dolphins come from. What they are not told is that the vast majority of corralled dolphins end up as mercury-laden "whale meat" in Japanese school lunches.

The Japanese government and leaders of Taiji do everything they can to keep the story of the Cove hidden. The filmmakers respond with over-the-barbed-wire daring do, utilizing disguises, and state-of-the-art spy techniques to get the footage they want.

Be warned, "some of the footage is graphic and bloody, but the Cove also makes points that don’t depend on those shots for their effectiveness. We learn a lot about dolphin intelligence, witness the ineffectiveness of the International Whaling Commission in the face of Japanese lobbying, and learn how the high mercury levels in dolphin meat bring to mind the earlier mercury poisoning scandal at Minamata."  Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times

Friday June 25, 2010 at 8:00 pm
No charge for this screening  
United Methodist Church Classroom
777 Miramontes & Johnson, Half Moon Bay

Rated PG 13 for disturbing content

More info: www.HMBFilm.org

The Half Moon Bay Police Department has announced their plans to crack down on drivers not using their seat belts this weekend, June 25 and 26.

Teens will be a particular focus of the program.

Supervisor Rich Gordon’s office will be holding their monthly office hours on Thursday, June 24 from 10am until Noon at the Sheriff’s Coastside Substation in Moss Beach.

To: Ann Stillman, County of San Mateo, [email protected]

From: Barry Parr

Subj: Making MCTV work for the public

Ms. Stillman:

Thank you for holding a public meeting on the future of the Coastside’s Public, Educational, and Governmental television station, which is currently operated by MCTV. I wanted to share my thoughts with you in advance of the meeting.

I agree with the Civil Grand Jury that MCTV’s programming does not meet the needs of the community. However, I’m confident that if MCTV were more open it would do a far better job of serving the community.

I’m going to lay out the problems that have created the current programming crisis on MCTV, and offer a set of reasonable reforms that will improve the quality of MCTV’s service to the Coastsiders who are paying its bills.

The Problems

MCTV:

• Operates as a private corporation, despite the fact that 100% of its funding comes from public agencies through fees and taxes assessed on the Coastside community.
• Is managed by the members of a single family and overseen by a their hand-picked board.
• Is closed to public participation in its governance, holds its meetings unannounced and in private, and does not publish its minutes.
• Claims copyright to publicly-financed recordings of public meetings. MCTV reserves the right to deny re-use of these recordings and does not permit public agencies to make copies of DVD’s of its meetings for the public.  This allows public agencies to skirt public records laws.
• Claims copyright to all videos produced with its (publicly-financed) equipment by independent producers from the community. This benefits station management to the detriment of the public which paid for the equipment.
• Claims the right to cablecast and distribute to other stations without limitation for twenty years for all video not produced with its equipment that it shows on Channel 6. Again, this benefits station management to the detriment of the public on whose behalf they are licensed to operate the station.
• Requires that all submitted videos be reviewed by station management to assure that they do not express a point of view. This cuts at the very heart of the intent of setting aside a cable channel for free speech.
• Cannot be reached by telephone or in person during business hours.  MCTV is unreliable about returning messages left on its voice mail or emails sent. This discourages the public from having a conversation with the station that is licensed to operate a public channel on its behalf.

Recommendations

The licensing authorities (San Mateo County and the city of Half Moon Bay) should require the Coastside PEG station licensee to:

• Permanently license videos created at public expense for reuse and editing by the public.
• Hold its meetings in public and with proper notice.
• Treat its records as public records and honor public requests for information and documents within reasonable times and at a reasonable cost.
• Keep regular posted business hours when the station manager can be reached directly, both in person and by phone, by all members of the community.
• Publish a plan for public outreach with concrete goals and a set timetable.
• Allow individual producers to retain copyright to noncommercial recordings they produce using station equipment.
• Accept all videos created by residents of the Coastside which copyright-cleared and are not libelous or obscene, provide adequate promotion, and cablecast programming from the public when the public is likely to see them.
• Acquire a set percentage of its revenue from the community—through sponsorships, memberships, or fundraising—and to increase that percentage by a set amount per year.

Finally, the licensing authorities should appoint an ombudsperson to handle requests, complaints, and suggestions from the community and participate in future requests for proposals as a community representative. This would avoid the problem of the station’s unresponsiveness, while relieving city and county authorities of fielding complaints from the public.

As I said, these are reasonable, common-sense reforms which will greatly enhance the public’s use of its public access channel while not unduly inconveniencing the licensee. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Barry Parr
Montara