Supervisor Rich Gordon will be hosting his monthly office hours on Thursday, June 25 from 10 am until noon at the Sheriff’s Coastside Substation at 500 California in Moss Beach. Everyone is welcome to attend and meet one on one with the Supervisor.
The county Board of Supervisors will be holding a hearing on the county’s update of its Local Coastal Program at 5pm today at Half Moon Bay High School.
The Coastal Commission staff returned the update to the County with about 300 pages of recommendations and background. The county will respond to the staff report at the Coastal Commission, probably at the August meeting in San Francisco.
This is an opportunity to tell the county whether you support either the county’s version of the LCP, or the Coastal Commission staff’s recommendations.
A couple of weeks ago, the Sequoia Healthcare District expressed an interest in annexing the Coastside to help alleviate the crisis created by the closing of our medical clinic.
The political motivations of the move were telegraphed the headline’s reference to district president Don Horsley. Horsley is running against Coastsider April Vargas for Supervisor Rich Gordon’s seat next year.
The County Times talked to one of Horsley’s board members about the politics of the move. Jack Hickey wants to shut down the district and sell its assets, and he called Horsley’s plan "crazy".
"As far as I’m concerned (it) was a political move, since he needs name recognition out on the coast," said Hickey, noting that April Vargas, a Coastside activist, is one of the early candidates for Gordon’s seat. ...
Horsley, who lived for a time in Moss Beach, said he would be studying annexation even if he weren’t planning to run for the Board of Supervisors. ...
Though he likes the idea of annexation, Horsley said the district will look at other options. He said one solution may be to establish an urgent-care facility, which would be particularly useful on weekends, when Highway 92 is clogged with traffic.
The board will begin studying the annexation as early as next month.
Pacifica city council members Julie Lancelle, Sue Digre and Jim Vreeland (and two other candidates) have been nominated for the seat currently occupied by Dave Potter, a member of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors. Potter received a pro-conservation voting score of 24 percent in an annual ranking of the votes cast by coastal commissioners in 2008, reports Julia Scott in the County Times.
Julie Lancelle, Sue Digre and Jim Vreeland were all nominated in late May by both the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and the San Mateo Council of Cities. If appointed, the lucky candidate would serve a four-year term on the commission, replacing Dave Potter, a member of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors who has served on the commission since 1997. He represents Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. ...
The fact that the seat is open at all is unusual. After being appointed in 1997 by then-Speaker Fabian Nuñez, Potter was reappointed twice without opposition. Potter is again running for reappointment, but a campaign by environmental groups across the state took issue with Potter’s environmental record and persuaded Bass to consider other candidates, according to Burlingame City Councilwoman Terry Nagel, chair of the San Mateo County City Selection Committee. Other people are simply pushing for more local representation.
Two of the most important issues affecting life in the unincorporated Midcoast are the overdue update of the Local Coastal Program (LCP) and the groundwater situation. Both of these issues will be addressed at the June 10 meeting of the Midcoast Community Council (MCC). There will be two guest speakers: a staff member from the California Coastal Commission (CCC), and the County’s long range planner.
The meeting agenda is available on the "Agendas" page on the MCC’s web site. Links to the CCC staff report and to the just-released Groundwater Study are on the "LCP Update" page.
Leonard Woren
Member, Midcoast Community Council
The governor is proposing to cut state funding to the state park system. The California State Parks Foundation says that this could close more than 80% of the state’s 279 parks. There are 17 state parks in San Mateo County, including Half Moon Bay and Montara State Beaches, reports the Daily Journal. Furthermore, the closure of parks on the Southcoast could have a significant effect on the economy of Half Moon Bay.
But State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, cautions that no decisions have been made yet on park closures by the Legislature.
"Just because it’s tough times doesn’t mean you have to use bad judgment," said Yee, who indicated he would continue to fight for resources for San Mateo County. ...
The park system receives about $150 million from the state’s general fund and the public could be barred from 223 of the state’s 279 parks, according to park officials. ...
County Supervisor Rich Gordon represents coastal communities where many of the state parks are slated to be closed.
"It’s unclear whether the state will stop providing staff for the parks or just padlock them," he said.
The CSPF says "state parks receive less than 1/10 of one percent of the entire state budget". The Legislature’s Budget Conference Committee will consider this proposal on Tuesday, June 2. There’s a form for sending messages to your state representatives on the State Parks Foundation site.
State Parks in San Mateo County, from Daily Journal:
Año Nuevo, natural reserve
Bean Hollow, beach
Big Basin Redwoods
Burleigh H. Murray Ranch (park property)
Butano
Castle Rock
Gray Whale Cove, beach
Half Moon Bay, beach
Montara, beach
Pacifica, beach
Pescadero, beach
Pigeon Point Light Station, historic park
Point Montara Light Station (park property)
Pomponio, beach
Portola Redwoods
San Gregorio, beach
Thornton, beach
April Vargas will be covering the county’s proposed updates to its Local Coastal Program (LCP) at tonight’s Midcoast Community Council (MCC) meeting. The LCP is the county’s plan for the unincorporated Midcoast. It is required by the Coastal Act and must be approved by the Coastal Commission.
MCC will meet at 7:30 pm at the 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 county will be holding a hearing on the update at Half Moon Bay High School on June 16 at 5pm.
Coastal Commission staff rasised a number of significant issues with the county’s proposal. Some that were identified by the county as significant are listed below, but I’m sure there’s more that other folks in the Midcoast are interested in seeing covered.
Half Moon Bay’s attorneys explained why the city must now pay developer Chop Keenan the $18 million they agreed to pay him in their April 2008 settlement in a sobering presentation to the city council at Tuesday night’s city council meeting.
There were few comments or questions from the sparse audience, and no one from the public tried to argue with the high-priced attorneys on the dais.
The mood from the city council was one of acceptance—the final stage of grief. Mayor John Muller said that he’d still work to get assistance from the state, and that it was time for "some individuals who sit on the sidelines and don’t get involved" to support the city in its efforts. Naomi Patridge and Muller expressed their determination not to declare bankruptcy, but the city’s attorneys had already said that wasn’t really an option in any event.
The attorneys laid out the city’s options, or lack of them, one at a time. City attorney Tony Condotti spoke first.
Condotti said that the city can’t reinterpret its definition of wetlands because the interpretation came from state appellate court. In its decision, the court said it wasn’t bound by the city’s interpretation, and that interpreting the law is a "judicial function".
However, he believes the city may be able to change the buffer zones around the wetlands on Beachwood, which are part of the city’s zoning code. The code says that there is should be 100 ft buffer around ponds, lakes, and marshes. The city attorney suggested that the wetlands at Beachwood may not be among those that need a 100 ft buffer.
The city attorney also said that disincorporation would not remove the city’s $18 million liability to Keenan. Disincorporation would have to go before the Local Area Formation Commission, and LAFCO would be obligated deal with the city’s assets and liabilities—including its debt to Keenan.
John Knox of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe said that when the successor bills to AB1991 (SB863 and AB/SB 650) began to falter that they began to consider their options, and they have been preparing to issue bonds to pay the settlement.
The city has a very strong credit rating for a city of its size. S&P has just rated it AA-. If it issued bonds right now, it should be able to get an interest rate of 5 to 5 1/2% on 30 year general obligation bonds of $18 million. The city is not likely to ask for the full amount. It still has $5 million from ABAG and may be able to raise money from other sources.
Under those terms, the city would have to pay $1.2 million/year for 30 years to finance $18 million, and $800,000 a year to pay off $13 million.
Mark Levinson, a bankruptcy attorney with Orrick, said that the city will not be able to get out of its obligation to Keenan by declaring bankruptcy, because "you have the ability to solve the problem [by issuing bonds] and you’re choosing not to do it".
Levinson’s advice was to pay the judgement and not spend more money on lawyers, saying "John (Knox) and I are really expensive". He noted that if the city does not pay Keenan by August 29, it will owe 6% interest on $18 million going back to December 2007—another $2 million.
In crunching the Midcoast numbers from the 2000 census, whoever was in charge decided to move the mobile home park from Moss Beach to El Granada, moving it to a different mailing address, and water/sanitary district. It made for a sharp drop in population for Moss Beach from the previous census and an unusual increase for El Granada, essentially making the 10-year comparisons useless.
If statistics are supposed to help planning, it seems counter-productive to assign a significant neighborhood population to a census area in a different water/sanitary/postal district. One wonders what could have been the reason for this. Was there a confusion about the location of the Pillar Ridge community because it was called El Granada Mobile Home Park at the time?
Lisa Ketcham
Supervisor Rich Gordon’s office will be hosting its next Coastside office hours on Thursday, May 21 from 10am to Noon at the Sheriff’s Moss Beach Substation. Also, in June Supervisor Gordon’s office will be going back to the fourth Thursday of the month with office hours on June 25th.
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