Hello Coastsiders:  I am currently running for reelection to seat on the Democratic Central Committee in San Mateo County, representing Supervisorial District 3. I am the only Coastside resident currently on the Central Committee and with your help, I will be reelected. District 3 includes the entire Coastside from Montara through Pescadero, Pacifica, San Carlos, Redwood Shores, Atherton and the unincorporated communities near Redwood City and Menlo Park.

The Central Committee is the official organizing branch of the California Democratic Party on the county level. We take the lead on local voter registration and community outreach, endorsements, candidate mentoring and campaign/election organization. I have represented District 3 for the past six years, working closely with our outstanding Coastside Democrats club and raising issues of local concern to the county party.

I am currently the Central Committee Controller and have served as Assistant Treasurer and Chair of the Fund Development Subcommittee. I am also the Field Organizer for San Mateo County’s 2008 Democratic campaign and our leadership team is preparing to open our county campaign headquarters in San Carlos on June 7. In order to win back the White House and increase our majorities in the House and the Senate, we need a cohesive group of energized and committed local party leaders who can recruit and mobilize campaign volunteers to build a vibrant, successful organization countywide. It would be an honor to represent you in these efforts.

My name is on the June 3 Democratic primary ballot and I would greatly appreciate your vote. Even if you are a Decline to State voter, you may request a Democratic Party ballot and vote for me. The candidates I recommend for the other seats representing District 3 are Carole Dorshkind, Greg Loew and Daniel Yost. I have worked with Carole, Greg and Daniel extensively and wholeheartedly endorse them all.

In order to win on June 3, I need your support. Please spread the word to Democratic and Decline to State voters you know who live in District 3. Feel free to contact me with any questions and check out the League of Women Voters website at www.smartvoter.org for more information about me and the other candidates who are running.

Thanks so much and onward to victory,

April Vargas

Susan Alvaro is a Coastsider and member of both the San Mateo County Board of Education and the County Juvenile Justice Commission. Anyone supporting one of the other candidates (Gina Papan or Richard Holober) are invited to submit their own letters.

Jerry Hill, San Mateo County Supervisor and candidate for the 19th Assembly District, has an extensive record tackling the issues of the environment and healthcare in our county. He has been a leading supporter of initiatives on environmental protection, conserving our natural resources, and reducing our ecological footprint. He has served on a number of regulatory bodies, including the California Air Resources Board and Chairman of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. A leader in the effort to improve the quality of San Mateo County public schools, Jerry Hill understands that an investment in education is an investment in the future of the community.

As San Mateo County Supervisor, Jerry Hill has also opposed those pieces of legislation that represent special interests at the expense of the public and the environment.

Jerry has been an active supporter attempts to save our public schools from the devastating effects of continual budget cuts. As a credentialed teacher and long-time supporter of first-rate education, Jerry knows firsthand the importance of maintaining funding in our public schools to ensure our children get the education they deserve. His record of experience in improving the quality of our public schools and improving access to early education for San Mateo County residents highlights his dedication and commitment to the educational values that are important to us. 

Jerry Hill opposes the current version of AB 1991 which attempts to bypass important environmental and coastal protection laws in Half Moon Bay.  While sensitive to the need for Half Moon Bay to reach a settlement with a private developer or face an $18 million dollar judgment against the City, he believes the current version of AB 1991 goes too far.  Further discussion and compromise are needed.  When it comes to preserving San Mateo County’s precious open spaces and coastal areas, Jerry Hill has a proven track record that is unmatched by his opponents. He has been an active supporter of local and county-wide conservation efforts including those of the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District, and voting to pass San Mateo County’s ordinance on conservation easement in rural areas.

Jerry Hill has a reputation as a dedicated elected official who understands and appreciates our values as a community. I trust Jerry to do as excellent a job for us at the state level, as he has at the county level.  He understands what’s most important to us, and he has the experience to serve effectively in Sacramento. That is why we need Jerry Hill to represent us in the State Assembly. Make sure our voice is heard in Sacramento – vote Jerry Hill so he can continue his work on the issues that matter most. 

The California Assembly passed AB1991 by a vote of 45 to 19 at 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The bill needed 41 votes to pass, reports Julia Scott in the County Times. Assembly Republicans, who are in the minority, played a key role in pushing the bill out of the body. It faces an entirely new committee process in the Senate.

It took a while for members to come around to supporting the controversial legislation, or so it appeared. The first vote, in the early afternoon, was 19 yes to 12 no, with hardly any members voting even though the chambers were full. Mullin held the bill for a second vote later in the afternoon, which also failed with 35 yes and 15 no.

The objections from environmental groups caused Democrats on each committee that heard the bill to pause and some to vote against it, although Republicans came out strongly in its favor.

Mullin was counting on Republican support to pass AB1991, and the Republicans decided to withhold their votes for most of the day in a sort of political game to force the hand of some Democrats uncomfortable with supporting it, said Sara Ramirez, chief of staff in Mullin’s office.

"Before we went to the floor, we had support from the Republican caucus. They wanted some Democrats to sweat it out. I think they just found a bill they had control over," she said.

...

The bill will likely pass through three Senate committees before heading to the floor, where it needs to receive a vote by Aug. 31 to meet the deadlines outlined in the agreement. If the bill fails, the city will owe Keenan $18 million plus 6 percent interest per year.

In a press release introducing a new "truthsquad" web page,  Half Moon Bay Mayor Bonnie McClung and the city’s attorney Lanny Davis say that the Coastal Commission staff is lying to the legislature:

"The Commission staff has every right to oppose this legislation based on the facts, but the City cannot allow these false statements to go unchallenged," Mayor McClung said. "Once it became clear that the staff was misrepresenting its own history with the Beachwood property in an attempt to stop legislation that is vital to our City’s future, I knew we had to set the record straight."
...
"Because the Commission staff continues to consistently and repeatedly make misleading statements, despite multiple corrections by the City, I can only conclude the staff is intentionally misleading and spreading knowingly false statements to members of the Legislature," said Lanny Davis, an attorney for Half Moon Bay and partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. "When the legislators discover the truth, they will resent being misled by the Coastal Commission, a public commission that has already lost credibility on this issue."

Emphasis added. Click to read the full press release.

It’s time for the Midcoast to start learning about self-government.  This article from the September 1997 issue of Western Cities magazine is long, but worth your time. You may want to bookmark or download it for future reference. You can download a printable pdf from the MCC website.

©2007 Western City magazine. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the September 1997 issue of Western City magazine, the monthly publication of the League of California Cities. For more information, visit www.westerncity.com.

by Roberta MacGlashan

On January 1, 1997, Citrus Heights became California’s newest city, marking the culmination of a 12-year incorporation struggle that became legendary among the state’s local agency formation commissions (LAFCOs). But this is not just the story of Citrus Heights. It is the story of obstacles that citizens must overcome to achieve the goal of local self-government: Along the way, changes in the incorporation process took place that affect the way new cities are formed and must function in California today.

In many counties, new city incorporations are noncontroversial.  Some counties actually pay to make them happen, as Nevada County did for the City of Truckee.  But Sacramento County has vast urban density suburbs, developed in unincorporated areas and receiving mostly county services.  Prior to Citrus Heights, it had been 50 years since a new city incorporated in Sacramento County.  With a population of 88,000, Citrus Heights is one of the largest cities ever to incorporate in California, and possibly the largest without a pre- existing community services district or other locally elected governing body.

Obstacles to Incorporation

Some of the obstacles faced by the Citrus Heights Incorporation Project (CHIP) and the new City of Citrus Heights are unique to Sacramento County and Citrus Heights. But others that evolved over the course of this incorporation process apply to all prospective cities, especially those that face organized opposition, including costs, litigation and revenue neutrality.

At it last meeting on May 21st, the Coastside Democrats unanimously passed a resolution supporting Measure O.  Local Democrats are often participants in non-partisan initiatives for progressive actions. Measure O—Parks for the Future will provide a much needed source of funding for Parks and Recreation for old and young in all of San Mateo county for the bargain price of about $2 per month per person.  Join Democrats in voting for measure O on June 3rd.
Merrill Bobele
El Granada
Member, Loma Prieta Chapter Executive Committee
Sierra Club

The Assembly Appropriations Committee passed AB1991 in a 9-4 vote Thursday and will likely go to the full assembly for a vote next week, reports the Examiner.

Sierra Club California Deputy Director Paul Mason, who spoke against the bill, said the state’s major environmental groups would lobby against its passage.

"We’re certainly going to fight it hard because it’s a very troubling precedent when you waive all environmental laws for a certain developer. You do that here and every city and town in California is going to want the same treatment," Mason said. "It’s essentially the state giving away its oversight over the environment."

While Assemblymember Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, cosponsored the bill, Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, cast one of the four votes against it.

The decision cheered Half Moon Bay officials, who insist the bill’s language is narrowly written to address the city’s dire circumstances, and couldn’t be applied elsewhere.

Mayor Bonnie McClung said the vote put Half Moon Bay one step closer to achieving the best resolution in the difficult matter.

"The 9-4 vote in favor of AB 1991 shows that the committee understands how critical this legislation is to the future of our city," McClung stated. "The citizens of Half Moon Bay have worked hard on a grass-roots campaign to support AB 1991, and we are making every effort to see that AB 1991 becomes law."

Supervisor Rich Gordon is holding his monthly office hours at the Moss Beach Substation from 10am until Noon, as he does every fourth Thursday of the month.

Thanks to Kevin Lansing to reminding us to fax our objections on AB1991 to the Assembly Appropriations Committee. I’m not typically a writer-to-legislators. But this morning, I faxed the following message to Chairman Mark Leno.

Dear Chair Leno and Members of the Appropriations Committee:

I urge that the Appropriations Committee reject AB1991.  I publish a news website in coastal San Mateo County. I am writing as a resident of the community affected by AB1991 who has been following the lawsuit and settlement since the beginning.

There are a host of reasons why the bill should be rejected and I urge you especially to consider the detailed and thoughtful objections of the Coastal Commission, the state agency empowered to understand these issues. I want to focus on four particularly egregious problems with the law.

 

• AB1991 implements a secretly-negotiated settlement that ignored important public stakeholders. The city of Half Moon Bay and the developer wrote the settlement to divide its advantages between themselves. No stakeholders from the community, Coastal Commission, environmental organizations, or state agencies directly affected by the settlement were consulted.

 

• AB1991 is a template for selling exemptions from the law. In exchange for forgiving a debt that Half Moon Bay agreed to take on, a developer will be exempted from a host of local and state environmental, planning, and coastal access laws. AB1991 is a bad law that cannot be written in such a way as to not serve as a model for future legislation.

 

• AB1991 arbitrarily exempts a second property with significant environmental issues. Glencree, which was not a part of the original federal judgment, has not been properly assessed for wetlands or endangered species habitat. It was included for no reason other than that the developer wanted it.

 

• Half Moon Bay refuses to acknowledge that its actual cost will be significantly less than $18 million. Half Moon Bay will hardly be bankrupt if AB1991 fails. The city will be able to develop as many as 30 or more lots on the property, once it takes possession. Why has the city not provided the Assembly with an independent appraisal of their actual net costs?

Thank you for your consideration, and I hope you will consider the needs of all the citizens of California and not simply the city and developer in this matter.

Sincerely,
Barry Parr