I never thought I’d be interested in County politics, and I’m still a novice. Perhaps County politics is an acquired taste, like smelly cheese or fertilized eggs, biologically active and redolent enough to make the novice gag.

But the unincorporated Coastside has a huge stake in County government—and next to no influence. The County Times has a story on how the Board of Supervisors will look in the wake of Supervisor Mike Nevin’s departure.

The most interesting — and perhaps most telling — moment came when the board considered which supervisor it should appoint to the SamTrans board. Board President Rich Gordon had designs on the spot, but Supervisor Jerry Hill nominated new Supervisor Adrienne Tissier.

The move drew charges of "cronyism" from Gordon, who said there were already three other members of the SamTrans Board from Daly City and that the post should go to a non-Daly City resident. Hill said he believed Tissier’s experience would be invaluable on the board.

Hill, Tissier and Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson voted for Tissier, while Gordon and Supervisor Mark Church voted against the proposal. The split vote and Gordon’s comments were a departure from the consensus driven board under Nevin.

So what does it all mean?

One supervisor said he saw an alliance emerging between Hill, Tissier and Gibson with Church and Gordon on the other side.

In the same column, the Times took a look at the Peninsula Politics blog, whose headlines we’re featuring on Coastsider. PenPol has drawn attention to the Nevin-driven Daly City domination of the County and its transportation agencies.

Sources said former county Supervisor Mike Nevin believes the blogger is an aide for Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.

The source said Nevin believes the blog is slanted toward Yee and may be an attempt by Yee to hijack the political discussion on the Peninsula. Yee and Nevin will be squaring off for Jackie Speier’s State Senate seat.

A Yee aide quickly discounted that rumor.

There you have it, an anonymous source being quoted on the identity of an anonymous blogger. Maybe County politics is more interesting than I thought.

"Peninsula Politics" is a new blog that plans to provide "insider information, commentary, and a forum for discussion" of local politics.  So far, there are only a few posts since the site was created last Monday, but it’s very promising.

The author prefers to remain anonymous. He, she or they told me, "at this time, we are staying independent and anonymous in order for the site to grow without being dismissed as connected to a particular point of view or for not being connected enough (often the result of the power plays in SMC and SF).  Instead, judge us on our content and if we are able to produce timely, accurate information.  But simply stated, we are concerned residents of the Peninsula who are very interested in our local politics and believe there needs to be an open discussion forum available."

I’ve added a link to Peninsula Politics under "Coastside Bloggers" in the navigation bar. I’m also adding headlines from Peninsula Politics in the navigation bar below local bloggers as an experiment.

Blair King, former Half Moon Bay city manager, and currently Milpitas assistant city manager, was chosen Saturday as Lodi’s next city manager. King, the unanimous choice of the Lodi city council, is earning $166,000 a year at Milpitas.

Jim Grady is the new mayor of Half Moon Bay and Toni Taylor takes Grady’s old job as vice mayor. After the general election each year, the Council nominates and appoints a Mayor and Vice Mayor from its membership. Grady and Taylor were appointed at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.

Mayor Grady was elected in November 2001 and served as Vice Mayor last year.  Vice Mayor Taylor was elected by special election in 1999, and reelected in a regular election November 2001.  Vice Mayor Taylor served as Mayor in 2002.

Some of you might be interested to learn that I wrote this story and posted it to Coastsider during the CUSD board meeting using the District’s wifi network. My thanks to the District for opening this to the public. This report is based on a press release from City Hall.

The conservative Pacific Legal Foudation has launched a lawsuit challenging the critical habitat designations for 48 listed species of California plants and animals, according to the Mercury News. One species native to coastside, the Western Snowy Plover, is on the list [PDF].

The PLF says the suit builds on a victory that invalidated the designation of thousands of acres of land as critical habitat for the Alameda whipsnake. The PLF argues that critical habitat designations throughout California violate the ESA because the federal agencies did not adequately identify the areas that are essential to species conservation and routinely relied on inadequate economic analyses in evaluating the social impact of designations as required under the act.

The press release quotes PLF attorney Reed Hopper, whose name sounds like that of an endangered species, as saying "This lawsuit will promote species recovery by forcing the federal government to set goals and meet clear standards in designating critical habitat. It’s a win-win for everyone."

The Merc quotes Kieran Suckling, of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has appealed the whipsnake case, as saying "Only the Pacific Legal Foundation is cynical enough to argue that taking away habitat protection will help endangered species."

The lawsuit is on behalf of the Home Builders Association of Northern California, the Building Industry Legal Defense Foundation, the California Chamber of Commerce, the California State Grange, and the Greenhorn Grange.

The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) has chosen to divide up the coastside between two existing wards. The downside to this arrangement is that it splits the already small coastside community into really tiny constituencies.  From MROSD’s press release:

A total of about 30 people attended the public meetings and personally gave input on the redistricting alternatives to include the Coastside Protection Area, and another 20 people provided input via a survey on the District’s Web site. Results of the public comment clearly showed the one-Ward and two-Ward scenarios were the top choices of coastsiders for democratic representation of their community.

Ward 6 Director Larry Hassett, whose ward would include San Gregorio and La Honda under the new plan, said "Although the one-ward scenario was a consideration among coastside residents, the two-ward scenario is a tribute to the coast. Receiving many inquiries from the public during this process made me realize that having two directors represent the coastside would allow the sharing of the workload and provide greater Board availability and access for coastside residents."

According to MROSD, the San Mateo County Farm Bureau echoed a similar opinion and supported the two-Ward scenario because under this configuration there would be a Board member election every two years, rather than every four years, providing greater opportunity for a coastside resident to become a District Board member.

Reading between the lines suggests that coastsiders who expressed an opinion preferred the one-ward alternative. The upside of this arrangement for the MROSD board is that it assures bayside control of the wards and decreases the likelihood any incumbents needing to campaign on the coast. Director Hassett’s explanation of this as a "tribute" to the coastside sounds patronizing to my ear and I’d like to talk to some folks at MROSD about it. With the holiday tomorrow, I may not be able to get them on the phone til Monday.  I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, please share your reaction to the new ward boundaries in the comments on this story.

Click on the "Read more" link to see the MROSD press release.

On Monday morning, 25 employees of the Cabrillo Unified School District, parents, students, and community representatives will assemble for a marathon strategic planning process.

I’ve got a call in to Superintendent John Bayless, but since I didn’t find out about the meeting until the Friday before Monday’s meeting, I may not be able to talk to him before the meeting.

CUSD board member Dwight Wilson says the goal is to lay out the "educational strategic planning issues for the next five years." It’s not a facilities planning meeting.

Since the CUSD Board approved the process last spring, it has been out of the public eye. The District has been working on this without publicity or calls for volunteers. It’s unclear how Superintendent Bayless chose the members of the group (click on the "Read more for a complete list of members) or when they were chosen. Although they have already held one orientation meeting, no one seems to have heard about this process.

Armed with a binder of statistics about the community and the school system, the group will meet at Elkus Ranch from 8:30am to 8:00pm on Monday and Tuesday and until midafternoon on Wednesday—and that’s just the beginning. Committee meetings will follow for months until the final document is presented to the district in the spring.

The agenda for the first three days is ultra-generic planning stuff. The group will come to a consensus on a statement of beliefs, mission statement, strategic parameters, objectives, and strategies.  The team will also list internal and external factors, competition, and critical issues affecting the strategy. The process should generate enough material for a year’s worth of Dilbert strips.

Over the next three to four months, the group will break down into teams that will flesh out the strategies with tasks, timelines, responsibilities, and cost/benefit analyses.

In the spring, the group will reassemble and prepare the final strategic plan for the Board.

At Thursday’s Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) redistricting planning meeting, the District presented six alternative organizations for its wards.

They took input from the community at the meeting and you are invited to comment on them using an online survey. MROSD wants your feedback soon. They’re going to vote on the proposals at their next meeting, Tuesday November 9.

You need to take the survey to see the maps, which are too big to view side by side, and you can only take the survey once. So I’ve extracted the maps from the survey and put them on this page. Click on any map on the right to get a larger version.

In a note to the Open Space Neighbors mailing list, Mike Liebhold reports that MROSD says no members can be added to the board of the greatly expanded district.  According to Mike,  MROSD says they are constrained by the following "laws":

• The Board is limited to 7 members.
• Each ward must represent an equal population.
• The coastside is not populous enough for a separate unified ward so it must be combined with bayside population centers, despite diverging and competing requirements and priorities.
• Board members must live in their wards (therefore new ward boundary shapes are constrained by current board members’ residences. Except for Larry Hasset, all live on the bayside.
• Boundaries chosen by the board next week may not be readjusted until 2010.

DISCLAIMER: I’m posting this story without getting comment from MROSD because the deadline is so close. I’ve sent them an email asking for confirmation and I’ll update the story when I hear back.

I also encourage you to discuss the proposals in the comments on this story.

Today’s "California Report" on KQED radio looks at the role of the Coastal Commission in areas that are already developed or degraded, such as Half Moon Bay [third item down]. 

There’s not a lot of news for people who have been following these issues, but you can hear mayor Mike Ferreira talking about Wavecrest and a couple of quotes from the developer of Pacific Ridge. The report explores the issues of whether it’s important to protect degraded wetlands ("some of the most important wetlands are tire ruts") and whether the Coastal Commission should be involved in protecting land east of Highway 1:

The development decisions of the California Coastal Commission often anger property owners. Most of the contentious land use negotiations these days are not over scenic shorelines, as much of the state’s oceanfront property has already been developed or set aside in public parks. But there are still sizeable pieces of property under the commission’s jurisdiction a few miles inland. Environmentalists see that land as precious wildlife habitat. But developers say these are appropriate places to build and help ease the state’s housing shortage.

The $95 million dollar deal to preserve scenic Hearst Ranch is in conflict with the Schwarzenegger administration’s policy of not adding new park land, according to the Mercury News.  As part of the deal, the State Parks Department would receive 13 miles of beaches.

The issue has exposed a wider problem at California’s nationally famous system of state parks—one that threatens Schwarzenegger’s carefully cultivated reputation as an environmentalist. Because voters have approved $10 billion in parks and water bonds since 2000, there is plenty of money to buy new land. But because bond money cannot be spent on operating costs and the state has a $5 billion deficit, there is no money for rangers.

This policy is the same one that has put the Pigeon Point lighthouse parkland in limbo.

Some of the rinky-dink solutions under discussion include a checkoff box on tax forms, a new license plate.  Asking the citizens to pay to maintain their park system with taxes is apparently not an option.