The draft of Half Moon Bay’s annual audit says the city’s $18 million Beachwood settlement obligations "raises substantial doubt about the city’s ability to continue as a going concern", reports the County Times. The city is planning to issue bonds, but the debt service on those bond would be $1.5 million a year for 30 years.

The report continues: "Going concern relates to the city’s ability to continue to meet its obligations as they become due without substantial disposition of assets outside the ordinary course of business, restructuring of debt, externally forced revision of its operations, or similar actions."  ...

Mayor John Muller, who has refused to look at bankruptcy as an option to defer payment, said he was "shocked and alarmed" at the wording and blamed it on the fact that the auditing firm did not have a complete picture of all the steps the city is taking to lessen its debt burden.

"They don’t realize the details of what we’re doing. We do have the potential for bonding and we do have the potential to look for other resources," Muller said. ...

City Attorney Tony Condotti said he was preparing comments in response to the audit and would ask for "clarification" on what was meant by the term "going concern." He said that, from a technical standpoint, that language was based on accounting standards that don’t apply to public agencies.

Condotti was also prepared to argue that the city "doesn’t go out of business" automatically if it runs out of money to fund basic services and salaries.

The City Council will take up the report at its next meeting, Tuesday, Feb. 10.

Supervisor Rich Gordon, who represents the Midcoast on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, is planning to run for Ira Ruskin’s State Assembly seat, reports the Examiner, which has seems to have its own peculiar meaning for the phrase "it’s official":

It’s official, San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon is speaking with friends and supporters regarding a potential run for the State Assembly seat that will be vacated by current incumbent Ira Ruskin in 2010.

Ruskin, a former Redwood City mayor, was just elected to his third and final term in the State’s lower house. ...

The odds-on favorite for that seat would be Gordon who has served on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors for over a decade and previously served on the San Mateo County Board of Education. ...

By stepping out now, Gordon places himself among the early contenders and in politics, timing is everything.

Ruskin’s district does not include the Coastside.

Neil Merrilees is a member of the Midcoast Community Council

Should a member of a Sewer board be able to serve on the Midcoast council?  That is the issue the Supervisors will be discussing Tuesday. 

Sewer board members can’t also serve on a Fire Board.  They can’t serve on the Board of Supervisors.  They couldn’t serve in the State Assembly, or Senate.  Hillary Clinton can’t be secretary of State, and still be a Senator.  Barak Obama gave up his Senate seat, not because he is too busy (he is) but because he had to.  Our democratic tradition recognizes that serving two "masters" is an inherent conflict of interest, and is not allowed.

The Midcoast Council has an exception from these rules.  Members don’t have to follow the rules of every other elected official because the Board of Supervisors can completely disregard their advice.  I call it the "because we don’t have to listen" exception.  MCC members often state that they don’t have to worry about conflict of interest, and then complain that the Supervisors don’t take them seriously.  The two issues are directly related.

It isn’t about "pro-maximum development".  This issue isn’t about limiting choice.  Anyone will be able to run for the MCC.  Its about holding the MCC to the same conflict of interest standard as the Fire board, School Board, City Council, Assembly, right up to the office of the President.  It’s about fair transparent government.

Lessening the appearance of "conflict of interest’ at the MCC could help increase the influence of midcoast residents, which would benefit all of us.  Having a council that is easily overlooked benefits no one.  On Tuesday the Board of Supervisors is considering changing this conflict of interest exception. I strongly support this change.

Supervisor Rich Gordon’s monthly office hours will be at the Moss Beach Sheriff’s Substation on Thursday, January 22 from 10am until noon.

The biggest surprise at Wednesday’s meeting to discuss eligibility for the Midcoast Community Council was how many members of either the Montara Water and Sanitary District or the Granada Sanitary District have served on the MCC in its twenty-year history. And most of them were at the meeting.

Supervisor Gordon was unmoved by the outpouring of support [Montara Fog’s video of Gordon’s summary comments] for allowing members of our water and sanitary boards to represent us to Redwood City.

I can understand why it might not make sense for there to be a majority of GSD directors on the MCC. It’s less clear why there shouldn’t be at least one member of each of the Midcoast’s only real government agencies among the seven who represent our needs to the Board of Supervisors.

What did become clear as the evening wore on was that everyone in the room knew that the MCC has no power, no budget, no voice, and no staff. And that its wishes are ignored in Redwood City. What’s amazing is that anyone would want to serve on the MCC. Ironically, because of this, we’re even more grateful to them for their hard work in their service to the ideal, if not the reality, of a voice for the Midcoast.

The split in the room was no surprise either. The slow-growth Midcoast establishment showed up in droves in support of their man and the principal of voting for their own representatives. And their growth-boosting opponents demanded that the Supervisors give them a change they haven’t been able get at the ballot box.

This rift cannot be healed by more talk. And the Supervisors have neither the wisdom nor the authority to split the difference.

The Midcoast will never be free until we have sovereign authority over who speaks for us, how our money is spent, and how our community is planned.

At the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s Board (MROSD) meeting last night, Cecily Harris was sworn in as the newest elected official on the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s Board of Directors. She was elected in November by voters in El Granada, Half Moon Bay, Montara, Moss Beach, Redwood City, San Carlos and Woodside. The District is divided into seven geographic wards each represented by a board member elected to a four-year term. Harris replaces Director Ken Nitz, who served on the District’s Board for three consecutive terms.

Harris, a San Carlos resident, is a Financial Services Manager with the San Mateo County Parks Department and served nine years as a San Carlos Parks and Recreation Commissioner. She is interested in single and multiple use trails, interpretive programs, and natural resource protection.

New rangers

Three new rangers, Steve Gibbons, Brad Pennington and Rebecca Trout, were given their badges at the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s Board of Directors meeting last night. The hiring process included extensive interviews, a background investigation, psychological exam and a nine-week ranger academy where they were trained as peace officers.

The rangers will work to preserve and protect the District’s 57,000 acres of public open space land. Rangers interact with preserve visitors providing interpretive and educational information, first aid, and law enforcement. They also patrol and maintain roads and trails, complete projects that enhance and restore the natural environment and work to prevent and sometimes fight fire.

The District has two field offices, each with a staff of nine rangers.

Gibbons and Pennington will work from the Skyline field office and cover District lands in the Skyline and Coastside areas. Gibbons has a degree in biology and interned with the National Park Service where he studied big cats and other wildlife. Pennington holds degrees in park management and business administration and has experience in interpretation, maintenance, resource management and visitor services through his work with the Santa Clara County parks.

San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon is planning to attend Wednesday’s Midcoast Community Council meeting. Coastsider wrote last week about Supervisor Gordon’s proposal to limit who we can elect to the Midcoast Community Council. 

If you’re interested in how the Midcoast is governed by the county, you should attend this meeting. If you have opinion about how we should govern ourselves, you should plan to speak.

The meeting is at 7:30pm and this item will be discussed about ten minutes after the meeting starts.

Unless we can get the Supervisors to hold a real meeting on the Midcoast, this will be your only opportunity to speak at a convenient time and place. The Supervisors will be discussing this proposal during the day on Tuesday, Jan 27, in Redwood City.

The meeting will be held at Seton Medical Center Coastside: Marine Boulevard & Etheldore, Moss Beach. Take Highway 1 to Marine Boulevard and follow hospital signs uphill. Attendees must park in upper parking lots per hospital policy. Turn left just before the end of the main driveway.

The Executive Board of the Coastside Democrats have asked Supervisor Rich Gordon to hold a public meeting on the Midcoast to discuss his and Supervisor Rose Jacob Gibson’s proposal to keep elected officials from serving on the Midcoast Community Council, and to put the matter to the voters of the Midcoast:

It seems to me that such recommendations deserve a meeting with the community so that you can both explain your proposals, answer our questions, and hear our concerns.  This affects several current board members as well as who is eligible in the future. We would also like to discuss ways to provide more support for this board.  I am requesting that such a meeting be held on the coast side, in the evening, and with adequate notice to the public.  As you know, coming to Redwood City on weekday mornings is very difficult for many who live on the coast, especially for those who are employed during the day. Such a discussion could be held at a regular MCC meeting. 

At such a meeting, it would be helpful to know how many people serve on more than one County advisory council or board, both elected and appointed.  Your current proposal seems to limit citizen choice in an election.  Shouldn’t we decide through the ballot if we want people to serve in more than one role?  I would appreciate more information on the possible conflicts of interest as well as on how you propose to fill the current vacancy in a timely manner so that the MCC can fully address the many issues facing us in these difficult times.

The letter is signed by Coastside Democrats president Brigid O’Farrell.  Click below for the full text of the letter.

Yesterday, I wrote that San Mateo County Board of Supervisors won’t let our elected Midcoast Community Council speak for the unincorporated Midcoast.

For example, at the MCC’s Sept 24, 2008 meeting, the council considered a draft of a letter to the San Mateo County Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCo). LAFCo had just made some major recommendations about how the the Coastside should be governed—with limited participation from the public.  Responding to these recommendations is just the sort of situation where the MCC, and not the Board of Supervisors, should be speaking on behalf of the Midcoast community.

After a somewhat confused discussion of the draft letter by the Council, Supervisor Gordon’s Legislative Aide Andrew Berthelsen took the floor to tell our elected representatives that they could not address a letter to LAFCo.

This is followed by a fairly heated exchange in which MCC Chair Leonard Woren tells Berthelsen that a number of people, including Woren himself, are getting "more and more irritated with the way that you try to babysit this Council and tell us what to do."

We may need to get used to it.

Who can speak for the Midcoast? Not our elected officials, according to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.

The Supervisors are considering a proposal to forbid the election of current members of existing Coastside boards to the Midcoast Community Council. They can do whatever they want. Because they control the Midcoast and the MCC—and we don’t.

Three elected members of the MCC would be affected by this rule: Kathryn Slater-Carter is on the board of the Montara Water and Sanitary District, and Leonard Woren and Gael Erickson are on the board of the Granada Sanitary District.

The MCC has nominated Ric Lohman, another member of the GSD board, to fill a vacant position. I understand the issue with seating three members of the five-member GSD board on the MCC. But Lohman was one of only two applicants for two open positions on the MCC. And by addressing this particular issue with a blanket rule, the Supervisors neglected to check the bathwater for babies.

Because we are ruled by Redwood City, our water and sewer boards are the closest thing the Midcoast has to local government. But the Supervisors want to keep those board members from representing us on matters unrelated to excrement.

The Midcoast is a colony of Redwood City

The Board of Supervisors is the "city council" for the unincorporated Midcoast. Montara, Moss Beach, El Granada, Princeton, and Miramar depend on the county for zoning, parks, roads, public works, and police services—unlike incorporated cities, such as Pacifica and Half Moon Bay.

But our votes don’t matter to the Board of Supervisors. They are elected by the county at large, instead of by the districts they ostensibly represent. The Midcoast has 15,000 of San Mateo County’s 700,000 residents. We’re only 2% of their electorate. They are 100% of our local government. You do the math.

The MCC exists to represent our community to the Board of Supervisors. But as a strictly advisory body, it has no power. We don’t control the MCC, and soon we won’t be permitted to choose who represents us there.  And because the county counsel has already told the Board of Supervisors that it is legal for elected members of local boards to serve on the MCC, the Supervisors have decided to change the rules.

The Supervisors aren’t just moving the goalpost, they’re burning it down.

Who speaks for the Midcoast?

The Supervisors have literally forbidden the MCC to express an opinion that has not been approved by the Supervisors, and only the Supervisors are allowed to represent the views of the Coastside. The Board of Supervisors have already sent one of their staffers to forbid the MCC to send a letter of comment to the Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCo) about the needs of the Coastside.

Does the Board of Supervisors want honest advice from the Midcoast Community Council? Or are they looking for someone to tell them how much we love they way they’re ruling us, and please sir may we have some more?

Instead of trying to undermine self-government on the Midcoast, the Board of Supervisors and our district representative—Rich Gordon—should be working to increase our control of our own destinies.