On Tuesday, December 13, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors continued their hearing at Half Moon Bay, this time in the board’s chambers in Redwood City.  We were there to get the story (it ran on Tuesday) and to get photos of the speakers and summarize their comments.  We’ve added two more pages to our album from the first meeting, and they begin on page 6 of the album.

April Vargas, of the Committee for Green Foothills, wrote an excellent summary of the supervisors’ comments and notes for staff. Click "read more" to read April’s notes.

At the end of the day Friday, seven of eight precincts have been counted in the Half Moon Bay City Council recount. While neither Bonnie McClung nor Mike Ferreira have gained votes, the number of challenged ballots has increased to eight.

One precinct’s non-absentee ballots remain to be counted on Monday.

Lani Ream is a former Chair of the Half Moon Bay Planning Commission. Before she moved out the Coastside in 2004, she was a longtime resident of Half Moon Bay. In 1998, before becoming a Planning Commissioner, she was part of a grass-roots movement that collected over 1000 signatures in less than 10 days to protect the structure of the City’s Planning Commission from politically-motivated tampering.     

A December 7 article in the San Mateo County Times reported that newly-elected Council Members Bonnie McClung and Naomi Patridge will attempt to implement "a plank in their campaign platform" by "downsizing the Planning Commission from seven to five members." In the article, McClung also stated that she wants to "facilitate citizen participation." Both McClung and Patridge took office on Tuesday December 6 after McClung defeated incumbent Mike Ferreria by just 15 votes. A recount requested by Ferreria is currently underway.

Longtime Coastside residents might be feeling a sense of deja vu over the idea of purging the Planning Commission of two members in the aftermath of a City Council election. On January 6, 1998, newly-elected Council Member Betty Stone joined incumbents Jerry Donovan and then-Mayor Naomi Patridge to pass an ordinance that reduced the Planning Commission from seven to five members. [PDF]
 
Prior to the adoption of the 1998 ordinance,input from the public warned that it was "a very bad idea" to "replace our planning commission with a revolving crew of political appointees whose planning horizon is only as far as the next election." [PDF] Stone, Donovan, and Patridge forged ahead and passed the ordinance over the dissent of Council Member Dennis Coleman, while the fifth Council Member, Debbie Ruddock, was absent.

The 1998 City ordinance spurred a group of Half Moon Bay residents, including myself, to circulate a petition in support of a referendum that would overturn the Council’s decision and restore the Planning Commission to its original seven-member configuration. A sample of some of the flyers handed out during the 1998 petition drive can be downloaded from Coastsider.

On Tuesday, February 3, 1998, our group turned in a total of 1,026 signatures, 62 percent more than were needed to force the City Council to either rescind the ordinance or put it up for a Citywide vote [HMB Review story]. On Tuesday, February 17, 1998, the City Council backed down and repealed the ordinance [HMB Review story].   
Some may also recall that back in 1998, Half Moon Bay was in the midst of considering the notorious Wavecrest project for approval at the local level. As part of our petition drive, we surveyed the Planning Departments of Woodside, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Santa Clara, Monterey, and Carmel. All had seven-member Planning Commissions with terms staggered from those of the City Council. In calling around, we heard comments like these:

From Los Gatos, "Concurrent terms would completely politicize a commission that should be an impartial panel of individuals who interpret, to the best of their ability, the land use plan of our City. That would open the door to political favors."

From Los Altos, "The Planning Commission of Los Altos is in no way, at all, tied to the elections of our City Council."

From Woodside, "We recently changed our nominations such that no appointments to the Planning Commission occur either immediately before or after elections to the City Council. We did this in an attempt to make it as hard as possible to politicize our Commission."     

Last week’s online edition of the Half Moon Bay Review also carried a story about the possibility of downsizing the Planning Commission. The Review went to great lengths digging up the history of how the Planning Commission went from five to seven members back in 1996, but curiously omitted any mention of the more recent 1998 attempt at downsizing involving Stone, Donovan, and Patridge. Why do you suppose that is?

Written campaign materials distributed by McClung and Patridge made no mention of their intent to downsize the Planning Commission if elected. [PDF] McClung did not list the downsizing issue as a priority as part of her candidate profile at Smartvoter.org. She did, however, indicate a priority for "developing a long range planning and implementation process." A downsized Commission will be deprived of the knowledge and experience of two additional citizens. How does that improve long range planning and facilitate citizen participation in local government decisions?

McClung’s Smartvoter page lists her top priority as "Establishing open/transparent government practices and ending the polarization present in our politics today." How does a calculated political move to dump Planning Commissioners further that goal?   

Our current seven-member Planning Commission includes an architect, a retired educator, a journalist, a practicing lawyer, a mathematician, an economist, and an engineer. These people give their time and attention to our City with no compensation to help make studied planning decisions. 

The downsizing issue is set to be discussed at the next City Council meeting on Tuesday, December 20, 2005. My advice to Half Moon Bay residents is to step up and once again say "no" to any attempt to politicize the City’s Planning Commission. Do not back down from a referendum. In 1998, it took us less than 10 days to gather the required signatures. Back then, the Planning Departments we talked to were "horrified" by this kind of action.

Bonnie McClung’s lead over Mike Ferreira has been reduced to 8 votes in the recount of Half Moon Bay City Council ballots, as of the end of the day Thursday. This is an "informal" count which is not official until the recount is completed.

The counting of absentee ballots yielded more votes for all candidates, as the counters discovered many ballots with markings so faint that they were not captured by the optical scanners that read them.  Mike Ferreira gained seven more votes from these sources than did Bonnie McClung.

Non-absentee ballots are easier to count, less likely to have these kinds of errors,  and less likely to yield additional votes. At the end of the day on Thursday, all absentee ballots had been counted and the recount of non-absentee ballots had been completed for two of eight precincts. The recount is expected to be completed Friday.

Also in play are four additional challenged ballots, with five additional votes at stake, which could become the subject of dispute if the gap between the candidates narrows further.

The recount of Half Moon Bay City Council ballots is continuing.  At the end of today, seven of eight precincts’ absentee ballots had been counted.  With one precinct remaining, it’s likely that the counting of absentee ballots will be complete in the middle of the day on Thursday.

At that point, Mike Ferreira will be faced with deciding whether to recount non-absentee ballots.

If you’re reading this, you’re invited to the Parrs’ annual holiday party at our home in Montara. Coastsider readers are welcome to join us this Saturday, December 17 at 8pm.  This is the second year we’ve extended an open invitation to Coastsider readers. We had a great time meeting our readers last year.

If you’d like to come, send an email to [email protected]  with "RSVP" in the subject line, and I’ll send you an evite with directions to our house.

After two days of recounting the ballots, Mike Ferreira sees no reason to stop.  So far, the county has recounted the absentee ballots from three of eight precincts. Although Ferreira can stop the process at any time, the counting will continue for a third day.

After hearing more testimony from citizens this morning, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors is moving ahead with its subcommittee’s recommendations for changes to the Midcoast Local Coastal Program. After an hour of testimony today and three hours last Tuesday, the supervisors made no concessions on the issues raised repeatedly by Coastside citizens: changing the 2% growth rate to 1% to be comparable with Pacific and Half Moon Bay, counting affordable housing units as part of Midcoast growth, rezoning the Montara Bypass as open space, or addressing infrastructure issues before authorizing more growth.

Today’s citizen testimony was weighted more heavily in favor of the subcommittee’s faster-growth (2% per year) recommendations than the slower growth (1% per year ) recommendations of the Midcoast Community Council and county Planning Commission.  Some 19 speakers supported the subcommittee’s recommendations to one degree or another, and 9 spoke in favor of the MCC/Planning Commission version. We’ll post a note when Coastsider’s album of speakers and positions has been updated, later this week.

At the conclusion of an hour of citizen testimony, the only modifications to the plan requested of the staff were to say that Highway 1 would not necessarily be widened continuously between Devil’s Slide and Half Moon Bay, check into the legality of income limits on affordable units at the request of the San Mateo County Association of Realtors, look into flooding and stormwater issues, avoid "checkerboarding" in mergers of substandard lots, look into giving failed wells a higher priority for water connections, and the apparently self-contradictory goal of maintaining the Burnham Strip in El Granada as open space while working with property owners.

Supervisor Rich Gordon said that while the supervisors wanted to preserve the Montara Bypass as open space, they want to work with Caltrans rather than rezoning immediately.

The supervisors will probably not return to the LCP before their meeting on January 24.  At subsequent meetings, the supervisors will make tentative recommendations on those items they have not already addressed and direct staff to draw up the ordinances. So, there will be at least two more public meetings before the whole thing gets sent to the Coastal Commission, but there will be no more public testimony.

If you had some valuables stolen lately, you may get a chance to get them back.

On January 12, 2006, from 2:00pm to 9:00pm, the Sheriff’s Office will be displaying stolen property recovered in the execution of a search warrant, at the North Coast Substation, located at 500 California St. in Moss Beach. 

Detectives will be on hand, and you will have to describe any items stolen from you recently before being allowed to look at the recovered property.  If you have any questions, please call either the Detective Bureau at 650-363-4000, or the North Coast Substation at 650-573-2801.

Five very funny ladies are on the schedule for the next performance of Hysterical Housewives, December 16, 2005, at 8pm, at Old Princeton Landing.  The comics will perform about a 15 minute set of original and personal material.

Scheduled to perform on December 16, are Roslyn Ramsey and Jennifer Celestre both of Half Moon Bay, Juliet Haataja of El Granada, Lieben McDermott of Pescadero, and Terri Serappo, of Belmont.  Ms. Serappo will be making her debut with the group at the December performance.  Topics include raising children, marriage and divorce, sex and dating, dieting and ..."whatever else is driving us crazy," says teacher/producer Schell.

The doors open at 7pm. Advance tickets are recommended and can be reserved by calling 650-726-5424.  Tickets are $15 plus a can of food or non-perishable food item. This performance is also a food drive to benefit Coastside Opportunity Center. "We’re committed to continuing our partnership with the COC, and especially this time of year. It’s so important to open up the pantry and help the food banks meet the holiday need," continues Schell.