Ailanto properties (in an ad on page 11a of the February 22 issue Half Moon Bay Review) says, "40 homes can be built on Pacific Ridge without a traffic signal, saving us the cost of constructing this $1,000,000+ public works project".

If that’s true, I would say do it, and donate the saved $1,000,000 to the proposed park purchase.

If 3,000 vehicles pass the traffic light in each direction every week day, that’s 1.4 million cars passing the light every year.  If only 15% stopped at the light for two minutes, that’s 432,000 minutes, or 300 lost days per year. Adding weekend/special event traffic would make this a 365 lost days or a full lost year. This would repeat itself every year.

That’s equivalent to having an idling vehicle running 24 hours a day, 365 days per year forever spewing out carbon monoxide and other pollutants. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of our environmental efforts, such as Bike to Work Day?

In the past 10 years I have lived on Terrace there have not been any accidents at this intersection. This looks like a "massacre" of environmental common sense to me.

Jerry Steinberg, CE
Half Moon Bay

Wavecrest’s owners have backed out of a wetlands delineation for the third time in less than a year. The US Army Corps of Engineers wetlands delineation was being conducted in mid-January, but was suspended before it was finished due to differences between Wavecrest’s consultant and the Corps’ delineator.

In April 2005, Wavecrest pulled out of a delineation on the day before was scheduled to begin.  In May, they backed out of the rescheduled delineation without setting a new date.

It is expected that the next activity will be discussions between Wavecrest and the Corps over the technical details of the suspended delineation.

For most of its existence, Wavecrest Village, LLP has been managed by Ocean Colony Partners, which is a minority partner in the project. In the first half of 2005, management was taken over by majority partners Concar Enterprises and their consultant/manager Bill Barrett, formerly of Ocean Colony Partners.

As one of its creators and as executive director of the Coastal Commission since 1985, Peter Douglas he has been protecting the coast for decades, according to a very good profile in Capital Weekly.

Douglas’ attitude has made him many enemies, especially among property-rights advocacy groups. Ron Zumbrun, who founded the Pacific Legal Foundation and now heads a private firm, lost a long legal battle year that reached to the state Supreme Court. Zumbrun challenged the constitutionality of the commission’s structure, and said Douglas was a dictator who pushed his own ideas of what was right for the coast.

"He has an extreme goal for protecting the coast," Zumbrun said. "He does not really recognize the right to own and use private property. He’s from a different philosophy."

But even most of Douglas’ enemies admire him for his independence and determination. A former Coastal Commission member who asked not to be identified said, "[Douglas] is somebody who really believes in what he does. He’s not a hired gun. The downside of that is he is an ideologue, an extremist who has allowed his ideology to trump everything else, including logic."

In an dramatic turn of events, the Half Moon Bay City Council has compromised on the membership of the city’s Planning Commission, rather than change the number of commission members and their terms. McClung made the proposal at the meeting, and the details were worked out by the City Council. Council members David Gorn and Bonnie McClung had discussed this compromise (which McClung had proposed earlier) before the meeting.

Under the compromise, all planning commissioners have been asked to resign.  Each City Council member will nominate one member. Of the two members chosen by the council as a whole, one will be nominated by council members McClung, Patridge, and Fraser. The other will be nominated by Gorn and Grady.  The result should be a board with four members nominated by the new council majority, and three nominated by the new minority.

The council voted 4 to 0, with Naomi Patridge abstaining, to table the ordinance; and 5 to 0 to ask for the resignations of current commissioners and advertise the two positions to be chosen by the council as a whole.

David Gorn told me he wanted to avoid six months of fighting in the run-up to a referendum on the ordinance and untold months of bad feelings after the vote. "We couldn’t pass a parcel tax or a bond for the library or the police station in that kind of atmosphere," he said.

Bonnie McClung said, "We talked it out in front of the people and I like that sense of openness.  I’m proud of the entire City Council."

This also ends the promised referendum effort by Half Moon Bay resident John Lynch, who spearheaded a referendum that ended a 1998 attempt to restructure the planning commission.

We’ll post more details on this story later. The tape of the meeting, which promises to be interesting viewing, will be shown on MCTV, cable Channel 6, tonight at 7pm.

Click "read more" for a detailed account of the meeting.

At tonight’s meeting, the Half Moon Bay City Council will conduct the "first reading" ordinance to reduce the number of members in the Planning Commission [PDF of agenda] and make their terms concurrent with those council members appointing them.

The ordinance will require a second reading before it takes effect. At that point, opponents of the ordinance who want a referendum on the ordinance have 30 days to gather the necessary signatures.

Last Wednesday, the Half Moon Bay Review, for the first time we remember, took a fond look at the history and possible future of Cunha Intermediate School. However, they got their facts wrong on why the district was unable to build its middle school at Wavecrest:

The decision to build a new middle school at the Cunha site came almost 10 years after voters approved a 1996 bond measure that would provide funds to build a brand new middle school.

Initially the district planned to build at the Wavecrest development, but years of litigation regarding environmental issues have brought construction to a halt. That left the decision about where to build the new middle school up in the air for years afterward.

This gives the false impression that environmental litigation was the reason the school was never built at Wavecrest.

First, there has been no litigation. The closest that Wavecrest ever got to a courtroom was when Wavecrest Village LLC sued the city of Half Moon Bay, which had found the project to be out of compliance with its original development agreement. The suit was never litigated, and has since been settled.

Second, neither the lawsuit nor the original appeal to the Coastal Commission was over environmental issues. The former was over compliance with the original development agreement, while the latter was a quarrel between developers over development priorities.

Last, construction could hardly have been brought to a halt, since it has never been close to starting.

There are environmental issues with the Wavecrest project. The developers have not addressed the issues of endangered species habitat on the property, and have failed to bring the project into compliance with the Coastal Act and the HMB LCP. But all scheduled hearings before the Coastal Commission have been cancelled at the request of the developers. For a more complete history, see Coastsider’s chronologies of the Wavecrest and middle school projects.

This is not a small distinction. The Review’s story perpetuates the myth that "environmentalists" and "no-growthers" held up these projects. Like all myths, it’s charming but false.

At the January 3 meeting, the Half Moon Bay City Council resumed deliberation on a proposal initiated by Council members Patridge and McClung to reduce the size of the planning commission from 7 to 5 members and to make the terms of the commissioners run concurrent with those of the sponsoring Council members. The issue was previously discussed at the December 20 meeting

After a lengthy debate where each Council member weighed in more than once, Patridge made a motion for the draft ordinance under discussion to be formally introduced into the legal record for a vote at the next meeting on January 17. The motion was seconded by McClung and passed on a 3-to-2 vote. Fraser sided with Patridge and McClung while Gorn and Grady voted no.

If passed into law, the ordinance would end the terms of five sitting commissioners (McCarthy, Freer, Falcone, Lansing, and Kellenberger), effective on the date of the ordinance. The terms of the other two sitting commissioners (Poncini and Benjamin) would be adjusted to expire on December 31, 2007, so as to run concurrent with the terms of Council members Fraser and Gorn. Council members Patridge, McClung, and Grady would then presumably each have the opportunity to appoint a planning commissioner whose term expires on December 31, 2009.

One contentious issue was the idea of adopting concurrent terms in place of the existing arrangement that imposes staggered terms relative to those of the City Council. Gorn and Grady asked City Manager Debra Ryan to bring back additional information about the use of staggered versus concurrent terms in other local cities, as well as the reasoning behind the chosen setup.

The original ordinance that established the Half Moon Bay Planning Commission on September 16, 1959 called for a 5-member commission with a staggered-term arrangement for the members . At the time, there were four separate term expiration dates for 5 commissioners. The current staggered-term arrangement uses only two separate expiration dates for 7 commissioners. But those expiration dates are chosen specifically to fall during years when there is no scheduled City Council election. The draft ordinance discussed on January 3 would create a 5-member commission with terms that always expire during City Council election years.

The Council discussion touched on a number of intertwined issues. What is the right number of commissioners for planning efficiency or effectiveness? What is the logic behind the expiration of terms? Why does the current ordinance need to be changed if it already allows the replacement of commissioners without cause?

One pointed exchange between Council members Gorn and Patridge highlights the controversy that this proposal has stirred up on the Coastside. Gorn said “I don’t think we are talking about 5 or 7 planning commissioners. I don’t think we are talking about increased efficiency or streamlining the process…If you want to appoint your own people, then that is what you should do. Changing the rules is a red herring.”  Patridge responded “For you to sit there and tell me that I have not been upfront really makes me angry, because I have been upfront.”

As part of Coastsider’s continuing effort to provide coverage of this story available nowhere else, click "read more" to see actual excerpts from the January 3, City Council debate, as well as statements from members of the public speaking before the Council.

There will be a public workshop Wednesday evening to review and take comments on a plan to build houses on the bluff between the airport and the satellite station in Princeton. This area is north of the parking lot for Mavericks.  It’s just south of the bluff area that was bought last year by the Peninsula Open Space Trust and it a popular spot for hikers. In this Google map you can see the informal trails created by hikers.

I attended an earlier Midcoast Community Council meeting that took place on the site and virtually every hiker that passed thought that this was either public or permanently open space.

The developer plans to subdivide a 22-acre parcel into three lots and provide access by a road 20 feet wide that will use part of the access road to the Air Force radio transmitter site above Pillar Point Marsh. The applicant is Preservation Partners, John Boggs, 2450 South Cabrillo Hwy, Ste 100, HMB.

The public workshop will be Wednesday, Jan 18, 7pm to 9pm in the multi-purpose room of El Granada Elementary School, 400 Santiago St, El Granada. For further information contact Mike Schaller, Project planner at 650-363-1849 or [email protected]

Tuesday, January 3, the Half Moon Bay City Council will take up reducing the size of the Planning Commission from seven members with staggered terms to five members whose terms run concurrent with the city council member who appointed them.

To change the ordinance, the City Council is required to vote in two separate meetings.  After the second vote, the citizens who have promised a referendum on the ordinance have 30 days to gather enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot.