Rush-hour traffic on Highway 1 was tied up today by a Caltrans project in El Granada. Coastsiders tell me it took them more than an hour to get through the contruction zone.

The construction was supposed to be completed by 6am, but continued until 9. According to Bob Haus at Caltrans, the contractor O’Grady Paving was delayed by an equipment failure caused by today’s unseasonable rain.  Haus told me that the contract for the work includes a provision for fines for every 10 minutes completion is delayed past the scheduled time.

The work is part of a resurfacing project that spans from Half Moon Bay to Pacifica, which is scheduled to be completed August 31.

It will be another couple of months before the county Board of Supervisors begins to consider proposed changes to the county’s Local Coastal Plan.

Today, the County Board of Supervisors took another look the principles they plan to use to evaluate changes to the LCP. They made some minor word changes and asked the subcommittee that developed the principles to use them as an organizing structure for the proposed changes.  I’ll post the revised version as soon as I get a copy.

The subcommittee is expected to report back to the Board in July and the Board will take up the LCP revisions in late July or in August.

The Examiner ran an article today on Coastside skepticism about the Board’s approach to the LCP. My favorite quote:

The webmaster of "Coastsider," Barry Parr, called the proposed principles "vague enough to encompass pretty much anything" the supervisors might ultimately decide to do.

"The supervisors appear to be defining property rights here exclusively as the right to develop," Parr said. "A wider vision would include the property rights of the community affected by a neighboring property owner’s development plans."

Meanwhile, the San Mateo County Association of Realtors says its number-one concern is keeping houses cheap. George Mozingo, government affairs director of SAMCAR is quoted in the story as saying,  "SAMCAR’s priority is to expand affordable housing opportunities. Everybody can’t live in a million-plus home and the coastside community needs more housing for its workforce."

In its letter to the Board of Supervisors, their number-one priority appeared to be building more houses, regardless of price. SAMCAR said that it opposes designating the old Caltrans freeway bypass in Montara as open space because "being adjacent to the new tunnel, these properties would be ideal sites [for homes] given their proximity to transit."

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will return to the proposed revisions to the county’s Local Coastal Program on Tuesday, June 7 at 10am.  The public is invited and welcome to comment. It’s not too late to make your voice heard on this important issue.

In preparation for the meeting, the Board has released a revised version of their guiding principles for evaluating the LCP changes [PDF of principles]. The principles are vague enough to encompass pretty much anything Supervisors decide to do.

While it recognizes the unique environment of the Coastside, it contains a clear recognition of "private property rights", without making clear whether it envisions greater protections than those afforded by the US Constitution regarding "takings".

In a letter the Board of Supervisors, Coastsider Chuck Kozak recommends the supervisors look to the California Coastal Act for principles:

I find [the draft principles] to be well-intentioned, but repetitive of existing policy and uncharacteristically indeterminate in addressing issues specific to development and resource preservation in the Coastal Zone. ... I will repeat my recommendations from your April 13 hearing that you consider adopting as guiding principles the findings and declarations expressed in Section 30001 of the California Coastal Act

Kozak’s detailed letter is worth reading.

The meeting will be in the Board of Supervisors chambers, Hall of Justice and Records, 400 County Center in Redwood City. The meeting will be broadcast the following Monday, June 13, at 10am.

The County Board of Supervisors has granted the Harbor Village project in Princeton Harbor a two-year extension, requiring completion before May 2007, according to the San Francisco Examiner. The story includes a short progress report from developer Keet Nerhan.

"The underground and surface parking are complete, the retail structure is 50 percent finished," said Nerhan, a 36-year resident of Half Moon Bay. "The hotel foundation is being poured, the streets are almost done and the main water and sewer lines are ready for hookup."

Harbor Village has been controversial.  More information on the project, including the County staff report, Keet Nerhan’s submission to the county,  and a long letter opposing the extension, can be found at the Concerned Citizens of the Coastside
website.

An environmental consultant working for Half Moon Bay’s park planning company MIG has found fourteen California Red-Legged Frogs at the irrigation basin on the northwest corner of the park site. This confirms what nearly everyone, including the city, has already anticipated.

According to a memo from Dan Stephens, a resource management consultant [PDF of memo] from H. T. Harvey , on the team of the park’s planners at MIG:

It is likely that those individuals observed are only a portion of the frogs present in the basin.  It is not possible to definitively determine if the red-legged frogs are breeding in the basin, but breeding is possible.  It is likely that the frogs move back and forth across the site, between this basin and Pilarcitos Creek.  Such dispersal would most likely occur during the rainy season.

Coastsider reported in October that there was likely frog traffic between the site and the other side of Highway 92, and that the frogs might be breeding in the basin. The story quoted David Johnston, environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game,

"We don’t see any significant opposition to the plan," he said. And while he can’t speak for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, he doesn’t anticipate any major problems with them either. "I suspect they’ll want to add more to the design than we would."

Rich Quadri, the city’s park planner, said "We were told that it could be assumed there was habitat at the creek, but we didn’t know what else.  And that it would be good to get this out as soon as possible." Stephens’s memo says that surveying for the California red-legged frog can begin no earlier than the beginning of May. The survey was conducted May 9.

Quadri says MIG’s planning for the park has always assumed passive uses in the northwest corner, which may be required if the basin is determined to be frog habitat. The city is also exploring the option of moving the habitat to the buffer area near the creek, which would have to be done in consultation with the appropriate agencies.

It’s less clear what the impact of the frogs will be on the cost of the park.  "A lot of what we’d be doing would be required by CEQA [the California Environmental Quality Act]," says Quadri. A CEQA-ready master plan is already budgeted for. CEQA compliance costs are unknown until the park plan goes through the process.

However,  H. T. Harvey is recommending a Section 7 consultation with the US Army Corps of Engineers. That would expedite the process of working with the US Fish & Wildlife Service, but will entail additional expense.

The Cypress Cove homeowners association has taken the offensive regarding Half Moon Bay’s park plans.  The association has paid an attorney to write letters asking that the city’s grant applications be denied, and has commissioned a poll of residents that asks them to rank the ways in which the park will harm the quality of life at the townhouse community located next to the park site.

"Please stop this grant Application its tracks". That’s the conclusion of two letters sent by Cypress Cove residents to the state Office of Grants and Local Services.  One letter refers to Half Moon Bay’s application for a Roberti-Z’Berg-Harris Grant and the other to an application for a Youth Soccer Grant. [I downloaded the grant application from Half Moon Bay Online.]

The letters are both signed by Sue Hyder, president of the Cypress Cove Townnhomes Association (CCTA), as well as other Cypress Cove residents.  The letter were written, according to Hyder, by attorney W. Stephen Wilson of Tobin & Tobin, and paid for by the Association.

You can download the letters from Coastsider. The Roberti-Z’Berg-Harris letter is principally about the traffic and parking needs the park will create and whether the city has adequately planned for it.  The Youth Soccer Grant letter deals with whether the city has been honest about its needs for soccer fields and concludes with a condemnation of the park planning process. The letter references the Mid-Coast Recreational Needs Assessment from October 2002 regarding demand for soccer fields.

CCTA board member Marty Troop told me, "The grant information may not be accurate, and it needs to be looked at again by [the granting agencies]."

Hyder told me that she has a couple of concerns. The first is the amount of traffic the parks might produce.  According to the letter, the grant application says that the estimated annual park visitation will be 100,000 people per year.

Her second concern is with the process.  The letter to the state about the Youth Soccer Grant says, "we believe that this is simply a clever process created to ratify a pre-ordained result."

City Council member Mike Ferreira says he’s surprised Cypress Cove’s board is unhappy with the park committee process.  He told me that the process is addressing their concerns, "At last week’s Park Committee meeting the clear consensus of the four workshop groups was that vehicles should enter via Highway 92 and exit via Stone Pine. Active facilities are to be in the eastern portion and passive facilities are to be in the western portion near the residents." He also said that the City Council has been clear that the grant applications were put together by City Hall staff to meet a deadline and that the money would not be accepted if unacceptable conditions were attached.

Ferreira expressed concern about attorney Wilson’s involvement in the attack on the city’s grant applications.  He said, "They have hired an extremely political attorney who has a political agenda and is pursuing it with association money."  Wilson has worked with political organizations on the Coastside that have opposed the current City Council majority.

Hyder says, "The association hired Wilson and he did not approach us."

Hyder acknowledges that there are supporters of the park process living in Cypress Cove. She says that’s the reason the Association has commissioned a survey to get "a clear sense of what the property owners want."

The survey asks respondents to rate their degree of agreement with three reasons why the new park would be good for the community and thirteen reasons why it would be bad for the quality of life in Cypress Cove. I’ve written surveys as a market research professional and this one doesn’t look neutral to me.

I asked Hyder whether the poll was a "push poll"—a poll designed to influence the respondent. 

Hyder said she wasn’t familiar with the term and pointed out that respondents can disagree with any assertion in the survey.  "The original version of the survey had a long list of negatives," she told me, and said she had sent it back for revisions. The survey was created based on background materials provided by the board to its author.

The survey also asks a series of questions that pertain more to City Council and School Board politics, such as the feelings about improvements to the city’s library and police headquarters, widening of Highway 92, and how they feel about the "direction the City of Half Moon Bay is moving".

Hyder told me those questions were on the survey at the request of the poll’s author Dave Cresson, of the Consumer Survey Center in Half Moon Bay. "He said that it was for his own information." She noted that the Association had a hard time finding a survey company they could afford, but that Cresson was local and gave them a good price.

The poll also asks residents about a new vision of the park. There are a couple of questions whether respondents would prefer for the "passive park" or "an active sports complex". No other options or combinations are offered.

What does Hyder want the city to do? "In our heart of heats we would like the city to put development of this property through the same rigorous process they would any other development in the city."

John Lynch's letter in this week's Review referred to -- but was published without -- the clipping he had submitted with it. You can see it below. It's from the Half Moon Bay Review in January of 1947. Note the spelling of "subdivion" in the headline.

Despite the continued need for water for development, some things have changed in the intervening 60 years. The plan was to build 150 homes. The largest were to be 900 square feet and occupy lots of one half acre. These monsters would cost about $8,000 apiece. If there was sufficient demand, the developers said they could build another 100 homes on the site.

Wavecrest Partners has postponed the delineation of wetlands on their property a second time, on the eve of the Cabrillo Unified School District’s reconsideration of its Wavecrest middle school site.  The delineation of wetlands is a necessary step if the project is to get the assistance of the Army Corps of Engineers in dealing with endangered species habitat on the property.

The delineation was scheduled for next week.  Last week WRA, Wavecrest’s environmental consultants, called the Army Corps of Engineers and asked to postpone the delineation without setting a new date. The first week of April, Wavecrest postponed their first scheduled delineation the day before it was to take place.

CUSD Superintendent John Bayless told me today that Wavecrest had informed him they were delaying the delineation, and would report this to the school board middle school site discussion meeting tonight. The meeting will be tonight at Hatch Elementary School in the Multi-Use Room at 7:00pm. It promises to be a very interesting meeting.

Last night, I attended the screening of the KQED documentary "Coastal Clash" at the Pt. Montara Lighthouse.  I left shaken and inspired by its depiction of the threats to California’s coast and what people are doing to save it. As we left, my wife Cheri said, "It makes me want to write something for Coastsider." I replied, "Yeah, me too."

I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know, especially about how our attempts to prevent erosion affect our beaches, and how private coastal estates are denying the public access to miles of shoreline that we own.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I can recommend spending the $25 to buy the video.

If you have seen the movie, or if you’d rather wait for KQED to broadcast it again , you should definitely visit the Coastal Clash website. There are great animations of how beaches evolve, coastal population growth, and the effect of "armoring" on beaches and bluffs. I’ll be referring back to this information as I start to look at these issues on Coastsider.

The site also contains lesson plans in for high school science and social science classroom. I don’t know how much of this is taught in our classrooms right now, but every student on the Coastside should be getting this material in school.

The biggest lesson for me was that the California Coastal Commission pays attention to citizen input. According to Commissioner Sara Wan, who is in the movie and was at the screening, the commissioners are hearing from a lot more lobbyists than citizens. But if you call them, you can often get an appointment with a commissioner to talk about a specific issue before the commission.

The Commission is meeting tomorrow at Stanford. Among other things, they will be discussing applications for two large mansions on the Coastside. They should be taking those up by around 10am tomorrow.

The California Coastal Commission will consider two huge houses (7,650 and 6,785 square feet) proposed for agricultural land on the Coastside.

Coastal Commission staff has proposed that the floor space of these houses be reduced to 2,500 square feet and that the residential lot be limited to 10,000 square feet.  The goal of these reductions is to keep the prices of agricultural land determined by its value for agriculture and not for its potential as a site for a coastal mansion.  There are extensive reports on these two houses (west side of Bean Hollow Road in Pescadero and 21960 Cabrillo Highway).

The vote is going to be close and all letters must be received at the Commission by 5pm today. However, this is an ongoing issue on the Coastside and this is a good opportunity to educate yourself. The Committee for Green Foothills has been working on this issue with the County for a while and you may want to take a look at their coverage of mega-homes.