Supervisor Rich Gordon’s office will be holding Coastside office hours from 10am to Noon on Thursday, January 28 at the Sheriff’s Coastside Substation in Moss Beach.

San Mateo County is the only remaining county in California with at-large elections for Supervisors.  During the last 40 years only one Coastside resident has been elected to the Board of Supervisors.

The cost to run a county-wide campaign is much higher than a district campaign, and the expense of running such a large campaign drastically limits the candidate pool.

The Charter Review Committee will have public meetings in Redwood City starting this week and possibly running though June 30, 2010.

For more info on the Charter Review Committee please read the following:

• San Mateo County Grand Jury Report [pdf]
• Charter review panel to meet Jan. 13 [County Times]
• Stacking the deck aginst reform in san mateo county [Examiner blog]
• Grand Jury Demands District Elections for San Mateo County [Peninsula Examiner blog]
• Unincorporated San Mateo County Housing Allocation Process: “There’s got to be a better way” [The Pelican Eye]

Committee Members include:

• Rosalie O’Mahoney and Cary Wiest (appointed by Supervisor Mark Church)
• Sean Foote and Beverly Miller (appointed by Supervisor Rich Gordon)
• Melanie Hildebrand and Ruth Nagler (appointed by Supervisor Carole Groom)
• Dolores Canepa and Susan Brissenden Smith (appointed by Supervisor Adrienne Tissier)
• Dave Pine (appointed by San Mateo County School Boards Association)
• Dave Burow (appointed by Council of Cities)
• Kathy Everitt (appointed by League of Women Voters)
• Daniel S. Cruey (appointed by SamCEDA)
• Shelley Kessler (appointed by San Mateo County Central Labor Council)
• William R. Schulte (appointed by Sustainable San Mateo County)

*Three appointees to be announced: Two from Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson and one from the Youth Commission. Source: San Mateo County counsel

WHAT:  First meeting of San Mateo County’s charter review committee. The Meeting is Open to the Public
WHEN:  Wednesday, Jan. 13 6:00pm
WHERE:  Room 101, 455 County Center, in Redwood City.

The League for Coastside Protection [LCP] has been fined $3,500 for two election code violations in connection with the "Voice of the Coast", a newspaper published by the LCP in the months before the 2005 election, reports Julia Scott in County Times.

The LCP, a political action committee, did not identify the name and address of the organization on the outside of the newspaper. It also misreported the amount of money it received from two contributors, Jim Marsh and Mike Ferreira, who took out ads in the paper and were

later

endorsed by LCP for the Coastside County Water District and Half Moon Bay City Council.

"We support the commission and their purpose," [league Co-Chairman Scott Boyd] said. "We agree with them that when we looked closely at this stuff we did make these mistakes."

Boyd also emphasized that the money his group accepted from candidates went to purchase paid ads in the newsletter and did not influence the content of the publication. [...]

[Executive director of the Fair Political Practices Commission Roman] Porter added that the fines for both violations were well below the $10,000 they could have fetched. Documents show his agency was inclined toward leniency because the League for Coastside Protection had contacted the commission during the 2005 election to seek advice on publishing the Voice of the Coast and because the group did print its name and committee identification number on the inside of the newsletter, if not the outside. The Coastside group also amended its reported contributions after it realized it had miscalculated them.

Disclosure: Voice of the Coast reprinted some articles from Coastsider. All articles on Coastsider are covered by a license that allows free re-use by anyone, with attribution.

Last night at a special MCC meeting is was announced that Lisa Grote resigned from her position as San Mateo County Community Planning Director.

I emailed Rich Gordon’s office this morning with the following questions:

What date did the planning director resign and who is the acting director? 

What is the process for hiring a new director and how long will the process take?

This information will be updated later today:
http://www.thepelicaneye.com/2010/01/lisa-grote-planning-director-turns-in.html

Sabrina Brennan
http://www.thepelicaneye.com/

Updated, with information from Supervisor Rich Gordon’s office:

"The Community Development Director, Lisa Grote, has accepted an opportunity with the City of San Mateo. She will conclude her work with our County on Friday, January 22nd. The County Manager expects to announce next week what plans will be for the near-term and the process for recruiting her replacement."

Check out the onsite trail system offered by Big Wave Project.  Throughout the project documents, the “North Trail” is touted as a Coastal Trail Extension to POST property and the blufftop, a totally false claim.  This existing access road stops abruptly in a tangle of blackberries at Pillar Point Marsh. 

The “Wetlands” and North Trails together form a paved fire access road for the Project.  The combination of the two for public access provides only a loop trail hugging the back of the parking lot and tall Office Park buildings.  There is no open space or blufftop access from these roads.  Their square footage is even included in the area of proposed restored wetlands at the Project.

A hopeful improvement to the dangers of walking or biking along Airport St. might be the proposed trail along the front of the Project.  Studying the plans shows an 8 ft wide concrete walking path inside the existing roadside drainage ditch which would remain—in other words no road widening and curb with parking, as was provided by neighboring development to the north. 

Instead of road widening with a designated bike lane, or a separate multi-use trail, which this area really needs, Big Wave proposes some road narrowing.  Between the two Big Wave parcels, at the concrete headwalls where the drainage culverts pass under Airport St. to the marsh, the walking path swings out to the road and narrows to 4 ft wide.  To make room for the walkway, the road is narrowed leaving 12 ft in each direction for vehicles and bikes together with an unforgiving K rail edge.

Sixty feet of K rail would protect pedestrians as they approach and cross the culvert area, with five sand-filled crash barrels at the leading edge of the K rail.  On the east side of Airport St., same K rail and crash barrels, but no protected walkway.  K rail and crash barrels take up road shoulder space on both sides of the road.  In this era of Traffic & Trails raised consciousness, can’t we have something better than this?

Supervisor Rich Gordon’s office will consolidate their November and December office hours to a single day, Wednesday, December 9th at 3pm at the Sheriff’s Moss Beach Substation at 500 California Street in Moss Beach. 

San Mateo Co.Planning Dept.
Attn: Camille Leung, Planner
455 County Center, 2nd Floor
Redwood City, CA 94063
[email protected]

Re:  Big Wave Project Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR)
 
While I support the needs of the developmentally disabled, I have the following concerns about the adequacy of the DEIR for the Big Wave Project:

•  Visual Impacts:  Without story poles showing the potential visual impacts of the project, it is impossible to determine the project’s impacts on scenic views.  Four 50-foot tall office buildings would be grossly out of scale with the surrounding natural setting and nearby buildings.

•  Traffic: The DEIR defers any traffic mitigations caused by the project’s 2,123 daily trips to some time after full occupancy.

•  Water and Sewer: There is no guaranteed source of water and no guaranteed disposal of sewage, even though the site is served by public water and sewer agencies.

•  Geology:  The DEIR defers analysis of potentially significant impacts of violent shaking during earthquakes, liquefaction, and differential settlement under the buildings until future studies.

•  Hazards: The housing for developmentally disabled people would be located in a Marine Industrial zone, where all but the most hazardous chemicals are allowed.  Additional hazards from flooding, tsunami inundation, and adjacent airport operations make this a problematic site for an at risk population.

•  Affordability and Economic Viability: There are no enforceable income or affordability restrictions on purchase of housing co-op shares or condos.  The project relies on shaky financial assumptions to support the “affordable” housing.

•  Phased Development: The Office Park’s estimated construction period of 30-36 months in the DEIR is not realistic, given the developer’s intent to phase each building’s construction after rental or sale of each previously constructed building.  Wetlands restoration would not be done until after all construction is complete, which would allow stormwater runoff to carry sediment and other pollutants into the Pillar Point Marsh.

•  Isolation and Employment: Wellness Center residents would be isolated from community resources with reduced opportunities to mingle with the community at large.  Many of the Big Wave programs such as raising organic crops do not depend upon this site being developed.

•  Wetlands destruction: The owners of the property have destroyed wetlands under the guise of agriculture. Over 90% of the State’s wetlands have been lost.  The wetlands at Big Wave should be restored.
 
Sign: ______________________________  

Print name: __________________________       Date: _______________

Address: ______________________________

      _______________________________________

Lisa McCaffrey has called off the recount of ballots in the Granada Sanitary District election after less than one day of counting. Ric Lohman, Gael Erickson, and Leonard Woren have won the election.

Because the recount was not completed, the original count for the election stands, according County Elections Manager David Tom.

The Midcoast Community Council has a single vacant seat for which the application period closes on December 2nd.  With several new members this is an excellent time to consider joining.

The Council is an elected Municipal Advisory Council to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, serving the citizens of the unincorporated Midcoast in Miramar, El Granada, Princeton, Moss Beach, and Montara.  It is comprised of seven members locally elected, or appointed,  to four year terms.

The Council currently holds regular meetings at 7:30 PM on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month (except November and December) at the Seton Coastside Medical Center in Moss Beach.

Community members are encouraged to step forward and become involved in the ongoing issues impacting the unincorporated coastside community.

A summary posting is available at, and applications can be submitted to on the county’s web site.