The California Supreme Court refused Wal-Mart’s appeal of a ban on certain types of big box stores in Turlock, according to the Chronicle.  Wal-Mart was appealing an appeals court decision that said, "While zoning ordinances may not legitimately be used to control economic competition, they may be used to address the urban/suburban decay."

The April 5 ruling by the Court of Appeal in Fresno upheld an ordinance enacted in 2004 by Turlock (Stanislaus County) that was backed by neighborhood supermarkets and labor unions. The court, setting a statewide precedent, said local governments can enact such restrictions to prevent the collapse of local businesses and resulting urban blight.

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Turlock has a Wal-Mart store but responded to the company’s plans for a supercenter by passing the ordinance in 2004. Without mentioning Wal-Mart, the law prohibits any retail store larger than 100,000 feet that devotes more than 5 percent of its space to nontaxable items such as groceries. The City Council said the purpose was to preserve neighborhood shopping centers.

Half Moon Bay Planning Director Jack Liebster has resigned his position. His last day will be July 31.  In his resignation letter to city manager Debra Auker, Liebster said, "The long hours, magnified by the long commute, have taken a toll, and I look forward to a chance to recharge and retool, and spend some much-missed time with my family. "

UPDATE: City Manager Debra Auker says that it will take about three to four months to fill the position and that she will ask the city council whether it wants to use an executive search firm to fill the position. An interim director will be appointed until the position is filled. The city manager will fill the position and the amount of input from the community and city council is yet to be determined.

Leni Schultz is a resident of El Granada

The Burnham Strip Committee (BSC) of MidCoast Park Lands (MPL) in El Granada is busy again! We’re up and running to preserve as parkland the open space and ocean views El Granada is blessed with and to save the historic 1906 community design by Daniel Burnham.

Continuing a 15 year effort by concerned local citizens, the Burnham Strip Committee is seeking methods and means to preserve the community open space at the front of El Granada, the oceanside view corridor so beloved by locals and visitors alike. The Committee believes the time for a serious effort to save The Strip is now, because a central portion of the property has come on the market. An 8/10 acre parcel in the middle of the Strip is available for purchase and preservation and MPL’s Burnham Strip Committee is reaching out to the community to preserve this priceless public resource.

The "Burnham Strip" is the still mostly open space between Highway 1 and the developed portions of El Granada. The BSC’s goal is to preserve the views afforded by the Strip and to assure preservation of this key open space for our children and posterity. Ultimately the BSC wants to see the entire Strip as permanently protected open space/ parkland under public management.

The Burnham Strip Committee is actively seeking additional volunteers, public participation, donations, pledges, grants, and ideas to help preserve this vital public open space. Please contact BSC Chair Leni Schultz at 650-712-8368 or www.SAVETHESTRIP.org for information and to help

In a newly released report called the Bay Area Smart Growth Scorecard put out by Greenbelt Alliance, a Bay Area non-profit that focuses on land conservation and urban planning, San Mateo County was the only one of eight counties in the Bay Area to score 0% in the category of Growth Management�primarily because of its lack of "any effective growth management policy." From page 22 of the 44 page report (emphasis added):

Seven of eight counties have policies intended to prevent urban development on greenbelt lands outside their cities. However, their effectiveness varies greatly, splitting the counties into two distinct tiers. The four higher-scoring counties�Napa (90%), Alameda (75%), Contra Costa (75%), and Solano (65%)�have growth management policies established through voter-approved ordinances. Lower-scoring counties, including Marin (40%), Sonoma (30%), and Santa Clara (30%), have only general plan policies or map designations to manage growth. San Mateo scores 0% as the only Bay Area county without any effective growth management policy. While the San Mateo County General Plan does establish an �urban-rural boundary� around existing cities, it permits development at urban densities on rural lands.

The study was an effort to assess how the Bay Area will handle the expected growth of one million people over the next 15 years. The report concludes that the region is ill-prepared for that growth. A press release put out by the organization states that "the Bay Area Smart Growth Scorecard is the first attempt to evaluate the policies of every city and county to see how well the region will accommodate growth." "If it's done right, new growth can make the Bay Area a better place to live," said Tom Steinbach, Greenbelt Alliance's Executive Director, in its press release. "But right now, the region doesn't have the policies in place to make sure that happens."

Two days after halting filling and grading on the southeast portion of the property [Google map]  to be used by the proposed Big Wave project, the San Mateo County Planning and Building Division has sent a letter to the owners allowing the activity to proceed.

On Friday afternoon, Jim Eggemeyer, the county’s Development Review Services Manager, sent a letter to the property’s owner and his attorney, as well as the farmer who would be planting the property, saying the property was exempt from coastal district and grading regulations:

Preliminary research indicates that this issue was the subject of litigation in 1988, and a Superior Court judgment was rendered finding that routine agricultural activity on the property was exempt from both Coastal District Regulations and County Grading Regulations.

The county has asked that the farmer maintain a 100-foot buffer zone around wetlands on the property.

Based on our site inspection, none of the new soil deposited and spread so far is anywhere close to the wetland’s 100’ buffer.  At our site inspection, we asked Mr. Iacopi to delineate the 100’ buffer boundary along the wetland’s entire length on both sides of Denniston Creek.  We understand there are orange cones demarcating the boundary.  Please maintain these cones during your growing season.

The wetland buffer was marked with orange cones on Thursday morning.

Alarms were raised Monday evening when a bulldozer was seen spreading truckloads of dirt on the property. The property is directly adjacent to the Pillar Point marsh.  Vegetation had been removed in late 2004 or early 2005 with harrowing or deep discing.

Work continued Tuesday.  Wednesday morning, at least seven large dump trucks brought in loads of soil about every ten minutes. The area being filled was lower than much of the rest of the Big Wave property.  The fill dirt raised the level substantially. 

The California Coastal Commission’s enforcement division began looking into the matter on Tuesday, and made contact with Gary Warren of San Mateo County’s Code Enforcement office.

Wednesday morning,  Sheriff’s deputies requested that the bulldozer operator and a farmer who was on-site halt their activities until code enforcement arrived.  Mr. Warren arrived at the site and issued a stop work order.  The bulldozer was loaded onto a truck and removed from the site Wednesday afternoon. The farmer reportedly told officers that he was trucking in the soil to mix with the existing soil to grow pumpkins for Pumpkin Festival season.

Click the link to see copy of the county’s letter.

Tuesday’s Half Moon Bay City Council meeting went into super-overtime, dragging past 1am on Wednesday in order to deal with the controversy over the Boys and Girls Club’s grading of the land they lease from the city.

While the council declined to give the group permission to set up a pumpkin patch at the meeting, they directed the city staff to work with club president David Cline to come up with a lease amendment that would allow agricultural uses in the future, and to determine who is responsible for cleaning up the industrial debris on the site.  The council determined that the lease was clearly designed for a building and not for agriculture.

City hall staff is continuing to investigate whether changing the use of the land to agriculture would require a coastal development permit.

David Cline says he has one focus:  To get a club house built for the Boys and Girls Club of the Coastside.

It has been a long process. Cline, who is president of the group, says they originally leased the land for the building in 1997. At some point in the past, the property had been graded. Since then, while the group was waiting for Wavecrest to materialize, he says it was used as a corporation yard by the city of Half Moon Bay and was used to dump debris from the construction of the Sewer Authority Midcoastside plant at the end of the road.  We saw concrete and steel rebar all over the site.

His short-term plan, he says, was to use the land to grow pumpkins as a signature project for the organization. It would be a place where he could show the kids what was happening on their site, as well as the location for a fundraising event.

He approached the city about how to go about removing the debris from the site in preparation for building, and talked to Public Works Director Paul Nagengast.  As the subject moved from removing debris to grading the property, Nagengast told him that a Coastal Development Permit would be required.

Cline went back to the zoning ordinance, he says, and saw that the land was zoned for agriculture. The lease, he says, does not discuss agriculture. He went to the city planning department. "The senior planner wasn’t there.  I talked to another planner who was there."  He asked the planner, whom he declined to name, what he would need to do to prepare the land for agriculture. He was told that no permit would be required.  "He said to put up a sign. I put one up ten days ahead of time.  This time of year, we’d need to plant pumpkin seeds right away." The group’s phone number was on the sign and he says no one called to ask about the promised pumpkin patch.

When I asked if he had told the planner that he was going to grade the property, Cline said, "I told him we were going to prepare the ground for planting."

Cline talked to contractors and farmers for advice on preparing the land and planting pumpkins, and was ready to begin preparing the grounds. "I talked to the same planner. He said just go ahead and do it. We started scraping up the land.  There’s still a lot of debris on the site, it will require raking before disking [for planting]." Indeed, rebar can still be seen poking through the soil at some places.

As for his long-term goal, he just wants to build a community facility for kids and their parents.  "I’m interested in building a club. That’s all," he concluded.

Cline says he was unaware that the site might have contained wetlands.

David Johnston, environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game, says he walked the site

two years ago with City Manager Debra Ryan Auker and city council member Mike Ferreira when the city was considering selling the property to the Humane Society for a headquarters and adoption center.

"The site is likely to have wetlands. Some of the areas we walked through had pockets of wetland vegetation."  He said that a thorough analysis of a site can be expensive and take two to three years.

When I showed him the pictures of the site, his first question was, "Is Coastal involved?" That is, the Coastal Commission.

Johnston says it’s still possible to establish if Cline’s group graded wetlands. "You only need to meet one of three criteria to be considered wetlands in California: ponding duration, plant types, or glade soils. It’s harder to tell from the soils, but you can still do it."

At the end of the day Monday, city manager Debra Auker said the matter was still under investigation and that she’d report on it at the city council meeting Tuesday night.

The Boys and Girls Club of the Coastside has used a bulldozer to grade approximately two acres that it leases from the city of Half Moon Bay.  The land that was graded is likely to have included wetlands, and the grading was done without the necessary permits.

"We’ve commenced an investigation," says City Manager Debra Auker. "It appears that work was done without any permits."  The city called Boys and Girls Club president David Cline on Friday and told him to stop work on the site.  Auker is reviewing city staff’s conversations with Cline as well as the terms of the city’s lease agreement with the organization.

"I talked with David Cline about the site a couple of months ago," Paul Nagengast, the city’s Director of Public Works, told Coastsider. "He asked about grading and I told him they needed a Coastal Development Permit."  A CDP would have required a biological assessment of the site. The land is very likely to have contained wetlands, especially on its eastern end, which would have been discovered in the permit process. 

Nagengast wanted to emphasize the importance of the permitting process.  "The process is not there to hurt people, but to make sure that things like this don’t happen. If there is a permit request, there will be a biological assessment and a review of any existing documentation." He noted that the city should have existing environmental reviews of the site from earlier plans for either a park or a corporation yard on the site.

The group leases the land from the city for a token payment as the proposed site of its long-sought headquarters on the Coastside [HMB Review]. The site, on the south side of Sewer Plant Road, is part of a 14-acre parcel acquired by the city as the future site of a city park.  The presence of wetlands was one of the issues that kept the park from being built.

The grading probably took place on Friday. The land is now flat and dry and has a sign on it saying that it is the future of site of the Boys and Girls Club Pumpkin Patch. When we revisited the site on Sunday, the bulldozer was gone, and the following notice was posted on small 8 1/2 by 11 inch signs on stakes in the ground.

We held this story, hoping to speak to David Cline, but he has not returned our calls to his voice mail.

The Boys and Girls Club leased the site in 1997 with the goal of building its headquarters there, but abandoned the site in favor of space at the proposed Wavecrest development. The co-location of the Boys and Girls Club was considered a selling point for putting the Coastside’s new middle school at Wavecrest.  The combination was considered a selling point for the development. Wavecrest was found to contain endangered species habitat, and the development is now tied up with federal agencies. The school district finally decided that it would be cheaper and faster to renovate Cunha than to continue with its plan to build at Wavecrest.

The Boys and Girls Club has recently told the city it is again interested in building on the site it leases from the city.

Click the link below to see more photos from the site, including the acknowledgement notice from the Boys and Girls Club.

In an open letter to the local Coastal Commission program manager Chris Kern, Coastside Community First President Charlie Gardner has responded to Kern’s earlier letter to the city of Half Moon Bay with (by my count) 25 questions.

Kern’s letter said it is not possible to mitigate the taking of wetlands to build a road. Five of the questions in the letter are about whether it is indeed possible to mitigate the taking of wetlands to build a road. The remainder focus on a new issue: the Pacific Ridge settlement, which resulted in Coastal Commission approval of a traffic light on Highway 1 at Terrace Avenue.

Gardner has asked Coastsider to publish CCF’s letter as an open letter to the Commission. We’re running his letter on the second page of this story, as we did with Kern’s letter.

On the eve of a vote on one of the most contentious issues to confront the Coastal Commission, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez appointed four alternates to the commission.  At least one commissioner and the Sierra Club dispute his authority to do so, according to an AP story in the Mercury News. One of the alternates, a commercial and securities attorney from Orange County, is likely to vote on the Pebble Beach project.

The appointments came days before the coastal commission was scheduled to cast a final vote on a multimillion golf project in Pebble Beach, a high profile development backed by actor Clint Eastwood, former Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and retired golfer Arnold Palmer.

The Pebble Beach Co. - which hosts the annual fundraiser for the Democratic Party - is pushing a plan to build an 18-hole course, a driving range, an equestrian center, 160 new hotel units, a conference center and underground parking.

Coastal commission staff in March described the project as "highly problematic" because developers would cut sensitive pine trees in the Del Monte Forest and pave wetlands.

That’s 10,000 pines and 36,000 Yadon piperia, an endangered plant under federal protection, according to a much more detailed staff-written report at the Monterey County Herald. The Herald describes the plan as, "a new driving range, 160 new hotel units at the Pebble Beach Lodge and Spanish Bay, 33 new home lots, 60 employee housing units, a relocated equestrian center and various roadway changes."

On June 2, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Katcho Achadjian, San Luis Obispo County supervisor and gas station owner, to the commission, and Santa Barbara City Councilmember Dan Secord as an alternate.  Secord received a lower conservation score than all but two of eleven commissioners when he served on the commission in 2005.