Although the San Mateo County Board of Supevisors at their final hearing on their LCP update voted to accept nearly all of the proposed updates to the Midcoast Local Coastal Program, the supervisors voted to make one significant change to the proposal.  Housing will no longer per an allowable use on the Burnham Strip, which will be re-zoned as El Granada Gateway.  While some new uses will be permited, no more housing will be allowed.

The Burnham Strip is the strip of land between Avenue Alhambra and Highway 1 in El Granada [Google map].

The supervisors also voted to consider separately the exceptions being requested by the Big Wave live/work project for mentally disabled adults.

Coastsider will post video highlights of the hearing.

by Kevin Lansing and Steve Terry

Kevin Lansing is a resident of Half Moon Bay. Steve Terry is a resident of El Granada.

On Tuesday October 17 at 11am in Redwood City, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will hold what could be the final public hearing on the Local Coastal Program (LCP) Update Project for the unincorporated Midcoast. This wide-ranging project has the potential to shape the quality-of-life of Coastsiders for the next 50 years or more.

For Tuesday’s hearing, County planning staff has distributed a packet that includes a 20-page staff report of the remaining key issues of the LCP update project, along with the main project resolution to amend the LCP and enact County policy. The package also includes letters from the Committee for Green Foothills (on Burnham Strip uses), land use attorney David Byers (lobbying for priority water to serve the Big Wave project), and County Counsel Thomas Casey (on the LCP certification process).

This information has been compiled into a single pdf file from document files provided by County Planning staff. It very closely represents the printed packets mailed out by the Planning Department and includes bookmarks and hypertext links to facilitate navigation and comprehension.

Among other things, the new County ordinances reflect and would implement the Supervisors’ buildout vision for the unincorporated Midcoast. This vision includes a near doubling of the number of housing units on the Midcoast in coming decades and a proposed Midcoast residential growth rate of 2 percent plus numerous exemptions.

At Tuesday’s Half Moon Bay City Council meeting, Bruce Russell of Kenmark presented three projects that they are working on, including two that will improve coastal access:

Removal of riprap below the 18th hole of the golf course: The removal of not only the riprap that was dumped on the beach without a permit in 1998, but also riprap that was placed there in 1996 with the permission of the Coastal Commission.

Beach access at Redondo Beach:  They’re building stairways for access to the beach from Redondo Beach Road.

The final 32-unit residential project in Ocean Colony: While this project, called Carnoustie, was originally proposed in July 2000, Kenmark has made some changes since they took over management of Ocean Colony in 2005.  They’ve been working to resolve the Coastal Commission’s issues with the project. They’re considering building a low & moderate income project across the street from Cunha to meet their requirements under the law.

Who are the real Nimbies?

People have been throwing around the word "Nimby" lately. On the Coastside, Nimby (Not In My Back Yard) is usually used to describe people who insist that developers follow the law.

Some folks will tell you that the people who insist on environmental impact reports, biological studies, preservation of endangered species habitat, or even permits before changing the use of a piece of land aren’t environmentalists. They’ll tell you that these people are Nimbies or no-growthers using environmental preservation as an excuse to prevent development in their back yard. That their concern for open space, public access, wetlands, and endangered species habit masks a darker, selfish purpose: to prevent all development on the Coastside.

What do you call someone who doesn’t want to preserve the environment in their back yard?

Why isn’t it Nimbyism to say, "I want to preserve the environment, but not at the expense of developing the Coastside"?  Perhaps you didn’t support the expansion of the Midpensinsula Open Space District to the Coastside. Or you think the Peninsula Open Space Trust is bad for the local economy.  Or that the Coastal Commission has too much control of Coastside development.  Or you don’t think there should be a process for changing the use of environmentally sensitive land. Or you’re quietly planning to vote for Proposition 90.

Why doesn’t that make you a Nimby?

Personally, I don’t find the label useful. But if you insist on using it, why must it be applied to opponents to one type of activity in one’s back yard (development) and not another (conservation)? When will we accept that every proposal must stand on its own merits—including its relationship to its environment—and that name-calling has no place in our community?

The California Coastal Commission has sent a letter to Concar Enterprises asking some pointed questions about the nature of the agriculture they’re undertaking on the site [pdf of letter]. Concar is the owner of the portion of Wavecrest that was disked on Wednesday, September 6.

In a letter dated Wednesday, September 13, Coastal Commission Enforcement Analyst Jo Ginsberg asks fifteen questions, including what they plan to grow, to whom they plan to sell it, what they expect to get for it, and what it cost for security monitors on the site.

Two years ago, Coastsider estimated that Concar could gross between $5,000 and $10,000 by growing hay on the land as they planned at the time.

I called Jo Ginsberg, but she declined to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The deadline for tunnel construction proposals was extended last month from September 19 until October 24 [FAQ for contractors]. THe project is estimated to coast $220 million. Caltrans says this was done because, "Several potential bidders of this contract requested that the State postpone the bid opening date due to the project’s complexity and the need to coordinate work among potential subcontractors." Caltrans does not believe this will affect the project completion date.

Caltrans has received questions from nearly 100 bidders on its inquiry site for the project.  If you’re an engineer, you might find these interesting to read.

Smart Growth is a land use philosophy whose central tenet can be expressed in the following syllogism:

• Population growth and increased development are inevitable;
• Urban sprawl into rural and undeveloped areas is undesirable;
• Therefore, growth and development should be channeled into already urbanized areas.

That’s a simplification, almost worthy of Smart Growth for Dummies, but stripping the theory to its bones makes it easier to see how Smart Growth would apply to the Coastside.  Fasten your seatbelts, because this politically progressive philosophy actually encourages concentrated growth in areas such as Half Moon Bay and the urban Midcoast, in order to preserve the rural and open areas surrounding us, and enhance our community.  Here are some general Smart Growth principles, applied to the Coastside:

1. DON’T DISCOURAGE COASTSIDE URBAN GROWTH.  Smart Growth takes a dim view of urban growth rate limits, such as Measure D, and lot reduction schemes, like the one the Coastal Commission negotiated into the Ailanto settlement agreement.  As the Greenbelt Alliance recently observed, limiting the rate of urban growth, or reducing urban buildout potential, "can push development elsewhere, into other cities and out onto farm and other natural areas."  James Kunstler wrote in his highly regarded THE GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE: "The problem with the ‘no growth’ approach…is that the pressure doesn’t go away; if you don’t make some kind of provision for growth in the form of good planning, development just leapfrogs farther out into the hinterlands, resulting in longer commutes and more mindless sprawl."

Jimmy Benjamin is a former Half Moon Bay planning commissioner. This story has been corrected with a more up-to-date description of the Review’s correction. Coastsider had accidentally published an older version of the story. Now, that’s ironic.

Last month the HMB Planning Commission approved an overnight permit parking program. I will be appealing the project to either the City Council or the Coastal Commission, and wrote a letter to the City Planning Director to explain my concerns. I provided the Review and Coastsider.com with copies of my letter, and was surprised to see an error-flled and polarizing  summary of my appeal on the Review’s web site.  Although the abbreviated report was replaced with a much improved version a few days later, and both it and the print version are more accurate, it was up for an several days, an eternity in cyberspace. I am writing you to clear the air before another issue blazes out of control.
 
What is the project?  In response to residents’ concerns that some of these overnight visitors constitute a public safety threat, the program requires cars parked between midnight and 4am on streets adjacent to the state beach, in certain neighborhoods, to display a permit (to be purchased for $20/year) [map, Initial Study, Findings and Evidence]. When residents just east of the proposed permit area expressed concern that this would simply move the problem visitor a block away from the beach, staff explained that these noxious visitors are lazy, and will leave the neighborhood in search of another street next to the beach with easy beach access.

Sofia Freer is a former member of the Half Moon Bay Planning Commission

Two members of the city council attacked two of our planning commissioners without any justification following a marathon six-hour commission meeting on Aug 24. This could have been avoided if the city’s planning staff had not forced an issue by putting it on the agenda before all the facts were known.

At the council’s September 5 meeting, one outspoken member of the public accused "the chair and one other commissioner" of subjecting planning staff to "vitriolic criticism."  His charge was later echoed in somewhat muted tones by the Mayor and one of the other council members.  I viewed the videotape of the commission meeting several times, and saw no evidence of disrespect on the part of any of the commissioners. 

If there was any disrespect, it was on the part of the planning staff toward the commission and the public.  Staff chose to ignore the planning commission July 13 request for additional information, and decided to eliminate prior conditions of approval without the knowledge of the commission or public review.  Five of the seven planning commissioners expressed disappointment with these actions.  During my year on the commission, I saw a number of cases when city planners failed to comply with commission requests for additional information or changed staff reports without public discussion. But I never saw anything like what happened at the August 24 meeting.