Eda Cook of Half Moon Bay and Scott Buschman of San Bruno were awarded co-winners of Assemblymember Jerry Hill’s "constituent legislative" contest for their proposals addressing the problem of spilled loads from trucks on highways and roads.  The idea was researched, received input from the California Highway Patrol, and submitted to the Office of Legislative Counsel where it was drafted before being introduced as Assembly Bill 1379 on February 27, 2009. 

AB 1379 does two things: 

1. Requires commercial trucks that are carrying open loads (no top / cover on the truck) to post the phone number of the company on the truck.  This will allow consumers to report any issues.

2.  Increases the base fine for spilled load violations.  Currently the base fine is around $35.  This bill would increase it to $50.  This should encourage people to make sure that their loads are secure before driving.

According to the California Highway Patrol, since 2003 there were over 7,000 collisions caused by spilled loads in California resulting in 10 fatalities. 

More than 70 constituents submitted ideas ranging from local fixes to statewide reforms. 

The contest winners will be able to testify in support of the legislation during committee hearings in Sacramento in the coming months. 

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will take up consideration of a resolution to restrict elected officials from serving on the Midcoast Community Council [pdf].

According to the published agenda, the resolution is the first item after a proclamation at about 9:30am.

The details are sketchy, but Half Moon Bay has had a new "placeholder" bill introduced by Assemblyman Jerry Hill to help cover the $18 million cost of the Beachwood settlement, reports the County Times.

"I can guarantee you for sure it’s not about building houses. My ultimate goal would be to get some financial assistance and make this a nice little rest/park area," said [HMB Mayor John] Muller of Beachwood, which is a 24-acre expanse of tall grass, trees and scrub along Highway 1.

What form that financial assistance will take is unknown, especially considering the state budget debates. [Assemlyman Jerry] Hill said it might be possible to appropriate some new funds, but Muller said the city was much more likely to succeed at tapping into an existing bond with set-aside monies for a cause such as building a community park.

State Senator Leland Yee is also on board. Yee’s withdrawal of support played a significant factor in scuttling AB1991, the city’s first try at getting some relief. Because this has been introduced an an urgency measure, it will require a two-thirds vote to pass.

Send us your letters regarding Big Wave that you have sent to the county Planning Department. We’ll share them with the community.

Dear Planning Manager Leung

It is in the nature of a good professional planner to also be a Visionary, with the ability to look beyond the noise made by a few in the present, towards the needs of the Whole in the future.

Our Coastside is a Precious Jewel, not only for those of us who have chosen to live here in relative inconvenience and isolation, but to the rest of the people of San Mateo County, California, the United States of America, and all the countries of the World.

I meet people—ON A DAILY BASIS!—from around our state, country and world, who marvel at the beauty and ACCESSIBILITY of our little San Mateo County Coast, its beaches, hiking trails and lovely little businesses and restaurants. They tell me how wonderful their experience is to find such a place. They take back with them a memory that is often the unexpected high point of their vacation. And, they spend money and tell others what a great place this part of the California coast is for a vacation.

I simply don’t understand what purpose the Big Wave serves in the larger scheme of things, other than to put more money into the developers’ pockets. My own first cousin, Joan, has Downs Syndrome, a developmental disability. She utilizes a sheltered workshop situation and it seems to have improved the quality of her life. But, such work areas are best situated into, and spread out among, the larger community, so that the DD person can have the experience of MAINSTREAMING INTO the larger community, and NOT BE SET APART in a living/working/shopping area that will further emphasize their differences. It has long been understood in the field of human services that DD people, for their own happiness and fulfillment, should be integrated into the community as much as possible, not separated into concentrated communities consisting mainly of themselves.

Who are the developers really thinking of here? Not the DD people, who would be, essentially, institutionalized with decreased ability to share in the life of the greater Peninsula and Bay Area communities.  Not the accessibility of other San Mateo county residents to the Coastside. Not the people of the Coastside who need to get to and from work each day. Not the safety of all Coastside residents, DD and "normal", who would find it that much more impossible to evacuate in the face of a disaster. Not the many tourists, who would eventually learn to avoid this stretch of Highway One and take their dollars instead to Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. Not the residents of Greater San Mateo County, who look upon the Coastside, rightly, as their little place to "get away from it all" and have a few hours to a few days of accessible respite and renewal.

Please look into the future of San Mateo County. Please do not let a few greedy developers ruin one of the last best places on Earth.  Please serve the citizens of, not only the Coastside, but all of San Mateo County. Please take the long view - the one that is ultimately wiser, healthier for all citizens of San Mateo County, and more socially acceptable as well. Please do not let short-sighted greed over-develop the San Mateo County coastal areas.

Respectfully submitted

Susan Christine, M.A., MFT
Montara

Representatives from CalTrans will attend the Wednesday, February 25 Regular Meeting of the Midcoast Community Council (MCC) to give the public an update on the Devil’s Slide Tunnels project, answer questions regarding that project, and address other local Highway 1 issues.

Please post other questions for CalTrans as comments to this article so that they may be submitted in advance in case research is required.  At this time, CalTrans has been requested to also comment on the following:

• Progress on turn lane at Hostel entry
• Master plan for Highway 1 from Montara to Half Moon Bay
• Status report on what will happen to remainder of Highway 1 on Devil’s Slide
• Status report on sea level change impact and remedies for those impacts on Midcoast section of Highway 1.  [This report is due to be given to the governor at the end of March; there should be some early info on this area, in particular, what does CalTrans have in mind for SR 1 past Surfer’s Beach, and what’s the time frame?

The Midcoast Council meeting is 7:30 p.m. Wednesday February 25 at Seton Coastside Medical Center, Marine Boulevard & Etheldore, Moss Beach.  Please park in one of the upper parking lots—turn left off the access road just before reaching the end.  Seton requests that meeting attendees not park in the lot immediately in front of the entrance.

Applications are now being accepted for membership in the county’s Civil Grand Jury for year beginning in July. The deadline is April 17.
 

Any resident of San Mateo County for more than one year who is a citizen of the United States, 18 years of age or older, of ordinary intelligence, sound judgment and good character, with sufficient knowledge of the English language is eligible. Elected public officials are not eligible.

The Court encourages all interested individuals to apply.  The Court strives to obtain a cross section of the county population.  After the completion of an interview process by Judge Cretan, jurors will be selected through a random draw.

Application forms can be obtained by writing Grand Jury Clerk, Court Executive Office, 400 County Center, Redwood City, CA   94063 or telephoning (650) 599-1711.

Half Moon Bay needs to cut $1.75 million out of its annual budget of $11.6 million fast, reports the County Times.

[Interim City Manager Michael ] Dolder has met with union representatives of the local Police Officers Association and other labor groups; those meetings will resume next week.
"The sooner we do it, the better, because the economy continues to get worse. We want to be as quick as we can, rather than belabor the process," Dolder said.

The city is working to cushion the financial blow it will experience when an $18 million lawsuit settlement bill comes due June 30. It will also need to account for the recent drop in tourism and the attendant loss of hotel occupancy tax revenue, the single biggest contributor to the city’s general fund.

Half Moon Bay’s precarious financial situation comes as no surprise. In the past two months, the city — which passed an annual budget of $11.6 million in July 2008 — has already created about $920,000 in savings by slashing several vacant staff positions and reducing money transfers out of the general fund into special project funds.

The bulk of the general fund pays the salaries of staff across all city departments, especially the Police Department, so the additional $1.75 million in cuts will almost certainly have to focus on trimming more personnel.

Dolder saw the writing on the wall when he took a long-term look at the economy and the very-likely scenario that the city will be in bond debt for many years to pay off its $18 million obligation to Beachwood developer Chop Keenan come June 30.

The city is spending $15,000 a month to lobby state legislators for some sort of grant or debt-relief bill to lessen the burden of the lawsuit damages, which were negotiated down from $41 million after a federal court ruled against the city on a land-use case in 2007.

Due to a scheduling conflict, Supervisor Gordon’s office hours will not be on the fourth Thursday this month.  His office hours will be Friday, February 20 from 10am until Noon and the Sheriff’s Substation in Moss Beach.

In the article, in the business section of today’s New York Times, HMB has been hit once again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/business/09junket.html?_r=1&ref=business

Vivian A. Deuschi, a spokeswoman for Ritz Carlton, a luxury hotel chain, said these cutbacks "have had a terrible effect on hotels, and luxury hotels have been very vulnerable."...The Ritz Carlton, in Half moon Bay, Calif., has received cancellations from 32 groups in the last four months, a loss of $2.3 million in revenue, she said.