Letter: City council working at cross purposes?

As is well known, the City of Half Moon Bay suffers a severe deficiency of parks and playing fields for our youth and adults. Why, then, would our City Council adopt a stance that works against the Boy’s and Girl’s Club? Let me explain.

According to the local paper, the majority on the current council proposes to reinterpret the Pacific Ridge Settlement Agreement to eliminate the highway widening/traffic signal at Terrace Avenue—which would also extend the westside frontage road to connect with that intersection.  That extension would have provided signalized access to westside residents, farmers, the Sewer Plant, the projected Boys and Girls Club, and the projected parksite.  If this reinterpretation is pulled off then the decades old struggle, supposedly supported by some members of this current city council, to have the Boy’s and Girl’s Club and playing fields located near the sewer plant is either just about to become a dead issue, or someone is planning to stick the taxpayers with the bill.

Why? Because the 1997 Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Boy’s and Girl’s Club and playing fields, at this location, stated that it could not be approved without a Highway 1 signalized intersection to handle the increased traffic. There was other deficiencies in the DEIR that might have been resolved but not the lack of a traffic light.

The question of the lack of a signalized intersection for the Boy’s and Girl’s Club was almost about to be eliminated because access to Highway 1 would be accomplished with the Terrace Avenue widening/signalization/extension.

I’m very concerned that this kind of isolated decision making, this reactive no recognition of consequences, is, sadly, the order of the day.

John Lynch
Frenchman’s Creek