Developer Charles "Chop" Keenan will be allowed to build 129 new houses on Beachwood and the adjacent Glencree property [pdf of city’s press release] as part of a settlement agreement with the city over the Beachwood lawsuit. This returns the two properties to their planned development states in 1990, and gives Keenan the right to 46 houses beyond Beachwood’s original size of 83.

The settlement is dependent on the passage of AB 1991, which will exempt the development from state and local review, including (presumably) the Coastal Act. The bill is sponsored by assemblyman Gene Mullin and senator Leland Yee.

The city will also put a stoplight at Bayview, which will be paid for by the developer. The cost could be shared with future developments that use Bayview for access.  The city says that this "would also facilitate access to other new developments". This opens the door for the reconfiguration of Pacific Ridge to enable the building of the Foothill Bypass from Highway 1 to Highway 92.

The development will not be subject to the growth limitations of the city’s Measure A, which limits growth in Half Moon Bay to 3% per year.

Keenan will pay the city $2.25 million to offset the city’s costs and for the development rights.  If the legislation fails and the development rights are not granted, the city will owe the Keenan family trusts $18 million.

The city council approved the settlement with a vote of 4 to 1. Council member Jim Grady voted against.

UPDATE: You can download the settlement agreement from Coastsider.

The settlement of the Beachwood case by the city and the property’s owners could be announced at tonight’s Half Moon Bay City Council meeting, reports the County Times:

Attorneys for both Half Moon Bay and Palo Alto developer Charles "Chop" Keenan say that if a settlement is signed today, the details will be presented at the start of the regular City Council meeting following a closed-door session between the two sides.

"I think it’s likely to be at the council meeting. That would be my best guess," said John Knox, an attorney representing the city with the firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

At its March 18 meeting, the Half Moon Bay City Council saw a presentation of the County’s Midcoast Parks Plan, announced the resignation of its city attorney, introduced the ordinance that would rezone nursery property for a bird-themed RV park, endorsed the Measure O county tax for parks, began the process of revising its zoning code, heard its midyear budget review, and discuss a no-parking zone near Casa del Mar and the Lutheran church.

• Opening [5 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Presentation of San Mateo County Parks Plan [20 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Announcements [2 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Report out of closed session [2 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Oral communications [10 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Council & Staff reports, consent calendar (includes announcement that city will hire new attorney and says goodbye to outgoing attorney Adam Lindgren) [19 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Birds of Paradise RV park [30 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Parks for the Future (Measure O) endorsement [11 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Zoning code changes (definitions, development standards, permit procedures) [7 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Budget review and calendar [14 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• No parking zone near Casa del Mar, Lutheran church [19 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |

Rumors have been circulating all day (and last night) that the city was about to announce a settlement in the Beachwood case following its closed door meeting Thursday night. I called city hall this morning, asking to be copied when the city issued its press release.

Instead, the city decided to announce its decision to "authorize a settlement" by posting a note on its bulletin board, located in the City Hall parking lot. A note was put on its website at 3:10 this afternoon. The announcement reads in full:

March 28, 2008

City Council authorizes settlement of Yamagiwa case

As we have reported, the city and Ms. Yamagiwa have been in active settlement discussions. Last night, the City Council authorized a settlement, which remains subject to Ms. Yamagiwa’s review and approval. If and when Ms. Yamagiwa approves of the settlement, the city will make it public and will report the terms of the agreement. Until such time, the terms of the proposed settlement must remain confidential.

There are no other details.

Darin Boville publishes Montara Fog

The current dispute over the rights to recordings of public meetings goes back a couple of years. If you click on the "Video" menu at the top of the Coastsider main page you’ll see, for me, where this issue all began.

I have a strong interest in open government (my education is in public policy) and had been heavily contributing to Coastsider since about a year after I arrived here in the Fall of 2004. Initially those contributions took the form of still photographs but they quickly evolved to more elaborate projects, such as documenting each of the speakers at the 2006 Board of Supervisors LCP update hearings and writing extensive captions quoting from each speaker. You can still see the photographs in Coastsider’s new gallery area but the captions seem to have been misplaced: https://coastsider.com/gallery/index.php?album=lcphearing2_0

Then came Barry’s March 4th, 2006 post—it is the earliest entry under the video tab, on page eleven.

That was the post where Barry reported on a newsworthy event at the HMB City Council Meeting and used a clip from MCTV’s broadcast of the meeting to inform viewers about what had happened.

MCTV’s response? Their lawyer claimed copyright on the taxpayer-funded video and demanded that Coastsider remove the footage.

This was shocking.

If a citizen wanted to see that footage they would have to find out when it was playing on Channel 6 (if they hadn’t already missed it), and sit through who-knows-how-many hours of tedious meeting footage until they reached the newsworthy portion. And what if they wished to share the clip with others? Too bad—the video is broadcast only once and MCTV doesn’t maintain an archive.

That HMB City Council footage seems to no longer exist. For all practical purposes—by trying to gauge the extent to which that footage was seen by the public—that footage might as well have never existed at all.

Supervisor Rich Gordon will be holding his regular monthly office hours Thursday at the Sheriff’s substation in Moss Beach from 10am to Noon.  Supervisor Gordon holds office hours there on the fourth Thursday of the month.

I know that sometimes Coastsider can be earnest enough to gag a Smurf. Take the ownership of public records, for example.

I’ve been wrestling with MCTV over the right to publish newsworthy clips from their cablecasts for a couple of years. Through property taxes and cable fees, you and I pay for their palatial offices in Comcast’s El Granada equipment closet, executive director’s

[Correction: $60,970] annual salary for 25 hours of work a week [PDF of MCTV’s 2005 IRS filing], token payments for their dedicated camera crew, equipment, and even the actual, physical videotapes they use to record the public meetings of our elected bodies.

But MCTV will tell you that they own the contents of those tapes and will not allow anyone to redistribute them. This would be a shocking theft of public property if MCTV’s crime weren’t so penny ante—like stealing pencils from the library.

Last week, Supervisor Rich Gordon weighed in on the controversy [PDF] [Click here for a PDF of MCTV’s county charter] I’ve been bugging him about it for a while, so I only have myself to blame. Sensing that he was unprepared to declare all the recordings to be public property, I asked that the county at least assert its ownership of the tapes it paid for directly—those of Midcoast Community Council meetings.  However, I was extremely disappointed that Supervisor Gordon declined. He was willing to say that boards could negotiate ownership with MCTV—but they have every reason not to.

As I told Supervisor Gordon, MCTV’s policy panders to the worst instincts of our elected officials by promising to bury their newsworthy and controversial acts in hours of tedium.  Darin Boville looked into how the rest of the county handles this, and learned that no San Mateo city that streams their meetings allows a private party to own its copyrights. MCTV’s policy is so weirdly at odds with their mission and the whole point of taping public meetings that you have to wonder about their motives. Fortunately, the Montara Water and Sanitary District and the Coastside Fire Protection District are more committed to openness than MCTV gives them credit for.

What does all this mean? If you want a copy of last week’s Midcoast Community Council meeting, you can pay MCTV $50, roughly four times what you’d pay for a copy of "Citizen Kane".

MCTV’s executive director Constance Malach has made a lot of noise about MCTV’s nonprofit status, continually referring to Coastsider and Montara Fog "commercial" sites. This is a red herring, because (1) MCTV makes more money from its commercial activities than Coastsider and Montara Fog combined, and (2) MCTV has not answered questions about whether it would permit noncommercial sites to redistribute these public meetings.

MCTV is a private organization—in all senses of the word. Their board is

[CORRECTION: elected by a small number of members], and their meetings take place behind closed doors. MCTV has not answered my questions about what material they will accept for cablecast, how they are organized, the names of their directors, or even their price for DVD’s. 

I also asked MCTV whether it would cablecast Coastside board meetings that were created by the boards themselves. I received the following reply from Ms. Malach.

MCTV will not accept public meeting videos from third parties for regularly scheduled meetings of local agencies.  There are a large number of reasons for this that we can review with you at an appropriate time in the future.  We are aware of the sentence in the Gordon letter that you have referred to.  Upon seeing the letter, we discussed the matter with the County and we believe they now better understand the rationale behind our policy.  Our understanding is that Supervisor Gordon’s letter was not intended to ask us to change our policy, and we are not changing it.

I asked Ms. Malach to set a time, as she promised, when she could explain her reasoning. She replied, "You have my answer." MCTV is stonewalling, because they are not accountable to the public.

I’ve tried reasoning with MCTV. I’ve tried taking my concerns to the boards themselves. And I’ve tried to talking to the Board of Supervisors. I’m convinced that the only solution is the reform of MCTV itself, but it may not be worth the trouble. More on that later.

The March 4 meeting of the Half Moon Bay City Council was shorter than usual.

The only non-routine item was the rescinding of a coastal development permit for a lot merger and rezoning.  The zoning change was separated out so that the Coastal Commission could consider it.

The discussion of planning-director permits was pulled out of the consent calendar, and former planning commissioner Jack McCarthy commented on the inappropriateness of a permit for the creation of a corporation yard for CCWD’s pipeline project on Bev Cunha Country Lane (formerly Sewer Plant Road).

• Opening and introduction of PRIDE committee [4 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Closed session report [3 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Oral communications [28 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• City council reports [12 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Staff reports [16 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Consent calendar [3 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Rescind approval of CDP and begin rezoning [7 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |
• Discussion of planning director-issued permits [5 min]  | Quicktime | Flash |

The Midcoast Community Council will have an special meeting to discuss street access through the Seal Cove neighborhood due to the closure of Ocean Blvd. The meeting will be an informal discussion of alternatives, funding, assessments, and related issues. The meeting will be at Seton Medical Center Coastside, Marine Boulevard & Etheldore, Moss Beach. Take Highway 1 to Marine Boulevard and follow hospital signs uphill. MCC attendees must park in upper parking lot.

San Mateo County is offering anyone who lives or works in the County an opportunity to tour a jail, meet elected officials, watch a mock trial in a real courtroom and face the challenge of balancing a government budget by enrolling in the Spring 2008 Citizens Academy.

Forty participants will meet on eight consecutive Tuesday evenings and for two special Saturday field trips beginning April 1. More than 300 people have graduated from Citizens Academy since the Board of Supervisors launched it in 1999.

Each meeting will focus on a particular aspect of San Mateo County services. Presenters will include representatives from the District Attorney’s Office, Sheriff’s Office, Health Department, Human Services Agency, Planning and Building, Public Works, Library services and others.

Applications are due Friday, March 21. Click below for more information.