At its December 4 meeting, the Half Moon Bay City Council heard from the public on the Yamagiwa decision crisis. In unscheduled matters, council member Jim Grady announced that Jack McCarthy is resigning from planning commission because his is moving out of the city. And the council voted to withdraw the proposed transient occupancy (hotel) tax from the January ballot because of the financial uncertainty resulting from Yamagiwa. The discussion of the tax was early in the meeting and the final vote is at the end of the financial report.

• Oral Communications (Same as third video on Yamagiwa decision) [51 min]  | Flash |
• City council reports [7 min]  | Flash |
• Staff reports [1 min]  | Flash |
• Consent calendar [1 min]  | Flash |
• Lot merger and rezoning four nine lots at Magnolia and Second [17 min]  | Flash | Docs |
• Annual financial report [31 min]  | Flash | Docs |

Judge Walker handed Chop Keenan an arbitrary and capricious victory that should lose if the City appeals. The case revolved around a simple argument, that the city created wetlands in 1984 where none existed before. The City provided witnesses and testimony to the contrary, but the judge’s summary findings of "fact" only cited the witnesses’ for the plaintiff, none from the City.

There is lots of blame and a host of irrelevancies spewed by many who, while acting doleful, are actually gleeful about this loony decision. Well known operators like Terry Gossett (Californians for Property Rights), George Muteff (past candidate for HMB City Council) and CCWD’s Directors Chris Mickelsen and Jim Larimer are wildly pointing fingers at Mike Ferreira and other League for Coastside Protection-backed council members of the late 90’s and post-2000 years for standing up to Developer Keenan’s blustering legal assault. Remember that Keenan had twice lost in State court claiming there were no wetlands at Beachwood. Blaming the officials forced to defend the city against this wealthy and determined individual is merely politics as usual here on the Coastside.

Having moved onto the east end of Terrace in 1976, and living just 120 feet across from the southeast edge of Beachwood, I grasped that this area was a wetland biome in my first encounter. Why? Maybe it was the two mature Arroyo Willows on my property (photos and description of where they’re found: http://www.calflora.net/bloomingplants/arroyowillow.html , or the patchwork of willows extending north and northwest into the fields that constitute Beachwood.

Leaving aside the hydrology the case turned on for a moment, the inhabiting birds were wetland species. Lincoln sparrows and Rough legged hawks in the winter, breeding Yellowthoats and Swainson thrushes in the summer. There was an intermittent creek that flowed from a ravine near the high school southeast past my property and north out into Beachwood. By mid summer, some stagnant pools usually remained with aquatic garter snakes and Rough skinned newts, dragonfly nymphs and water striders. There were other wetland plant species like grasses, mint, sedges, a whole community that did not just magically appear the year I arrived. However much of this disappeared after 1984 because of the engineering effort to alter the drainage of the overall area.

Just as the biggest news since Devil’s Slide hit the Coastside, we faced the biggest technology crisis in the history of Coastsider.

The good news is that Coastsider’s back in business and working better than ever—and I’ve had a chance to spend some quality time with the Beachwood decision and attend two of the city’s three public meetings on the subject.  We’re going to begin Coastsider’s coverage with videos of the public comment portion of the three meetings held by Half Moon Bay City Council in the wake of Beachwood. We don’t have a lot of video of the city council discussing the decision, because they’re still trying to choose among a wide range of unpalatable choices.

I plan to offer some observations about the public comment we’ve seen so far, but I’ll put that on hold for the moment.  Right now, here are the videos, recorded and encoded by Darin Boville, for those of you who haven’t already seen them on Montara Fog.

In an experiment, we’re embedding a copy of the Yamagiwa (a.k.a Beachwood) decision in our home page. It may take a few seconds to load, but you should be able to use the site in the meantime, and it’s a lot faster than downloading all 167 pages.  The copy you see here can be zoomed or you can go to any page almost instantly. Take a moment to give it a try.

This would be a good place to put comments (with page references) regarding the decision itself. For example, visit page 101 for the calculation of damages.

Plaintiffs were awarded more than $36 million in damages today in the case of Joyce Yamagiwa v. The City of Half Moon Bay and the Coastside County Water District, according to city attorney Adam Lindgren.

You can download the complete judgement from Coastsider.

There was a special closed session of the city council Thursday night at 5pm for the city council to consider its options and next steps. The city has one month to decide what to do next. Council member Jim Grady was out of town for the meeting and it was implied that no decisions would be made Thursday. The next schedule city council meeting will be Tuesday. We will have video of the public comment portion of Thursday’s meeting shortly.

The County Times has a very good summary of the case, with quotes from the winning side. For example:  "Keenan said he is open to discussing "creative" means of payment to ease the burden on the city. He said he would consider accepting the development rights for some other property in lieu of payment of some or all of the huge judgment."

UPDATE: Darin Boville has video of the public comment portion of Thursday night’s meeting over at Montara Fog. Darin says the mood of the city council and audience was somber.

Click below for a copy of the city’s press release outlining the history of the lawsuit from the city’s perspective.

• Proclamations, Presentations, Announcements [2 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• Oral Communications [4 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• City Council Reports [6 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• Staff Reports [3 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• Consent Calendar [2 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• Application for Coastal Development Permit, Rzoning, Lot Merger of 9 lots into 4 at Magnolia St and Second [29 min] | Quicktime | Flash | Docs |
• Set Feb 5, 2008, as the date for a vote in increasing Transient Occupancy Tax from 10% to 12% [62 min] | Quicktime | Flash | Docs |
• Disposal of land donated to the city by Labuda Family Foundation [12 min] | Quicktime | Flash | Docs |
• Staff update on administrative order on 450 Wavecrest Road continued to a date to be set, but not before Jan 10, 2008. | Docs |

Wednesday’s scheduled monthly meeting of the Midcoast Community Council has been cancelled due to an anticipated lack of a quorum. The next scheduled meeting will be Wednesday, December 12.

Two weeks ago Rich Gordon (of the Board of Supervisors, the governing body for the unincorporated midcoast) held a workshop in Half Moon Bay to get input on setting goals for San Mateo County. It was a high-tech affair with electronic voter handsets and instant results displayed on the big screen.

Very cool.

We need to do more of this sort of thing. Get people together. Talk about shared vales, shared goals. See what we can come up with.

I look at this workshop as a sort of prototype of the sort of thing that would go a long way toward making the coastside a healthier place, politically speaking.

If you missed the workshop but still want to take the survey it is all online.

On Sunday, November 11, Coastsiders for Obama will throw a house party in Half Moon Bay for local supporters of presidential candidate Barack Obama and those in the community who want to hear more about the Illinois senator and his environmental policies.

Maureen Maloney will host the event in her home at 670 Myrtle St. from 3:00 until 5:00 pm. Guests will see videos of the candidate and discuss his proposals to reduce global warming through new initiatives that include increasing energy efficiency, investing in a clean technology economy and requiring that energy conservation be part of the planning process for expenditure of federal transportation funds.

The League of Conservation Voters has awarded Obama the highest environmental rating of all of the presidential candidates, giving him a score of 100% for 2006 and 96% overall.

For more information and to RSVP please contact April Vargas at 650-728-5215.