LaVay Smith & her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, chanteuse singer with classic swing & jump blues band, will be at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society Sunday.

Parking is in the back of the building. Doors open at 3 pm for buying tickets and saving seats. Music starts at 4:30, goes to 7:30 with an intermission. Reserved priority seating for members. $28, with a $5 discount for those under 25.

On Wednesday at 7:45pm, the Midcoast Community Council hosted a debate by the candidates for Board of Supervisors.  Three of the candidates (Rich Gordon, Jo Chamberlain, and Jack Hickey) were contesting the seat that represents the Coastside. The fourth, Jerry Hill, is running unopposed for the seat that represents Foster City, San Mateo, and Belmont.  Click on the image to see the video by Darin Boville

This Memorial Day, Coastside Peace is sponsoring a free public screening of the award-winning 90-minute documentary film, "Beyond Treason"—Monday, May 29th, 7:30 p.m., The Depot, 110 Higgins-Purissima Road, Half Moon Bay.

"Beyond Treason" exposes the history of government-funded experimentation upon military personnel and US citizens, conducted without their knowledge or consent.  Comprehensive and compelling documentation demonstrates a massive cover-up lasting over two generations.  Beyond the disclosure of “black-ops” projects spanning the past six decades, this 90-minute documentary also addresses the more recent and complex subject of Gulf War Illness.  It includes interviews with experts, both civilian and military, who claim that the government is hiding the truth from the public and they can prove it.

Caltrans is not asking for Half Moon Bay’s approval of the proposed traffic light at the intersection of Highways 1 and 92.

The agency is performing a traffic study requested by the city next week, and waiting until the HMB City Council has a chance to review and discuss the study at its June 6 meeting. However, it is not seeking approval from the city before turning on the light.

"We want to work on a collaborative basis," Caltrans spokesman John Cunliffe told Coastsider.  Once the study is complete, he says, "The most logical decision should be pretty straightforward—What’s best for the efficiency of the intersection?"

Cunliffe reiterated Caltrans’s position that in this emergency it does not need a Coastal Development Permit from the city to install the light.  He declined to say whether Caltrans maintains it would need permission if there were no emergency.

When asked who was representing the unincorporated Midcoast, all of which is north of the intersection, in this collaborative process, Cunliffe said he’s getting plenty of input from people who live north of the intersection.

Coastsider went up to Devil’s Slide Thursday to shoot some video, take some pictures, and talk to Caltrans geologist Grant Wilcox. This is one of the best photo albums we’ve run and if you want to understand what the job site looks like, you should take a look.

The top question on our list was the one that seems to be on everyone’s lips this week: Could Caltrans offer one-way service for cars at rush hours? 

That was the hot question at Wednesday’s Midcoast Community Council meeting. It came up in the community comments at the beginning and during the debate between the candidates for San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.

We asked Caltrans spokesman John Cunliffe at the Slide on Tuesday and he says that there is no room for cars to pass with the massive cranes currently occupying the site.  The cranes speak for themselves. We walked between the enormous cranes that straddle the road now and we couldn’t figure out how to get a car past there, or how the move the cranes twice daily to open a lane.

In a couple of weeks, the larger of the two cranes will be moved off the site, but another crane, the size of the "smaller" one already there, will be brought up to the site. [Click for a closer look at this photo. Click that image for a much larger version.] One will be used for drilling the holes in the side of the cliff above the roadbed and a second one will be used at the same time to drill the holes under the roadbed. The holes will be used to tie the slide to the mountain on the other side of the current slide plane.  We don’t see how cars could pass with two of these cranes drilling on the site.

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors debate at the Midcoast Community Council, Supervisor Rich Gordon said that Caltrans might be able to open the Slide to one-way traffic in August. As the beginning of the new school year approaches, we expect this topic to heat up.

We also asked Cunliffe whether any Caltrans or construction vehicles were allowed to pass through the site between Montara and Pacifica.  He says they are not.  There were plenty of cars and trucks on either side of the site, but it was clear they were going out the way they had come in. 

Coastside County Water District (CCWD) has recently announced another water rate increase, 7 % this time around.  At its May 16 meeting the City Council chose to schedule the issue of water conservation for the very end of a lengthy agenda.  This is the time when most of the audience has gone home, the councilmembers, staff, and any remaining members of the audience are tired, and the viewing public has probably either turned off their TV or changed channels.

As I have stated repeatedly, providing homebuilders with the tools to save money and water in designing their landscapes is a very much-needed service.  Frequently, these new residents are unaware of our prolonged dry season, recurring droughts, and the not too distant future of doubling water rates.

The discussion of how the city could address the needs of home and landscape designers in a climate of decreasing supplies and hugely escalating costs of water was originally scheduled, for the April 13th joint meeting of the City Council, the Planning Commission, and the Architectural Review Committee.  The joint meeting was, however, almost exclusively devoted to an ethics-training workshop, and although I had a chance to speak about the issue, there was no time for discussion or action.
Now, a month l later, the Planning Department recommends that the council take no action on the issue and that it should be sent back to the Planning Commission for analysis, study, and recommendation.

Applicants for single residence CDP’s have presumably had to abide by the condition “any landscape improvement shall apply xeriscape principles for drought resistance and to reduce water consumption”.  However this dictate has been largely ignored.  Many designs have come forward for Planning Commission approval in which lawn areas in the front, back, and side yards were the predominant landscape feature. I first brought up the discrepancy between what was on paper and what was routinely approved on the ground more than a year ago.  How many more months or years will pass while the Planning Department and the Planning Commission toss this issue around? 

While the Planning Commission is pondering the issue, the City Council could have chosen to allow their standing resolution of 1993 to at least partially fill the gap.  All they had to do was to remove a single sentence: “These guidelines shall not be applied to single family residential projects involving no common area landscaping” They did not do that.

In the meantime, how many more water-intensive landscapes will continue to drain our watershed as well as the bank accounts of unwary residents?

The Half Moon Bay Open Space Trust (HOST) is looking for an executive director.  HOST’s mission is to acquire and preserve environmentally sensitive open space within the City of Half Moon Bay.  You can download the job description from Coastsider [PDF].

In addition to the contact informtion on the job description, you can contact Mike Kimsey 650-712-1273.

511.org has added travel times for Highway 92, including a map and travel times from Half Moon Bay to 280 and from 280 to Half Moon Bay.  The travel time link here will give you the time from the intersection of Highways 1 and 92 in Half Moon Bay to the intersection ofHighways 92 and 280.

On Wednesday May 24, incumbent San Mateo County Supervisors Rich Gordon and Jerry Hill will be present at the Midcoast Community Council meeting. Also attending will be Jo Chamberlain, the sole challenger for Rich Gordon’s seat in the upcoming June 6 election. Jerry Hill is running unopposed.

Below are some questions that I would like to ask the incumbent Supervisors, and also hear the reaction from Jo Chamberlain:

1. The Devil’s Slide closure has basically doubled the amount of traffic that must head south from the Midcoast during the morning commute. This is sort of like a natural experiment to see what traffic will be like under the Supervisors’ plan to double the number of housing units on the Midcoast in coming decades.  Given the extremely limited options for expanding Highways 1 and 92 in the future, the experience from the Devil’s Slide closure pretty much proves that the Supervisors’ buildout plan is a recipe for a traffic disaster. Why then, are the Supervisors forging ahead with this totally unworkable buildout plan?

2. On December 12, 2005, the Cabrillo Unified School District sent the Board of Supervisors a letter which stated quite clearly that Coastside schools "can support limited growth, but not a doubling in population." The Supervisors’ buildout plan completely ignores this important issue. How can the Supervisors justify a buildout plan that does not address the lack of capacity of the Coastside school infrastructure?

3. Half Moon Bay currently imposes a residential growth rate limit of 1%. After years of analysis and hearings, both the Midcoast Community Council and the County Planning Commission recommended that the Supervisors adopt a 1% residential growth rate limit for the Midcoast. The Supervisors ignored these recommendations and adopted a 2% growth rate limit as part of their buildout plan. Under their plan, the true growth rate limit would actually be much higher than 2%, because the Supervisors would grant full exemptions to: (1) new housing units classified as "affordable," (2) new second units, (3) so-called caretaker’s quarters in Princeton, and (4) disabled-persons housing (which have been proposed as part of the "Big Wave" office/housing complex). Given the severe future traffic problems that are already baked into the cake, how can the Supervisors justify anything but a strict (i.e., count everything) 1% growth rate limit similar to that imposed in Half Moon Bay?

4.  The Supervisors’ plan to double the number of housing units on the Midcoast will require a significant amount of water. The Coastside County Water District (CCWD) is already undertaking a series of major water system expansion projects to serve the Supervisors’ plan. Current residents are being compelled to pay for these projects with rate increases . In 2003, CCWD raised water rates by 9.6%. In 2005, CCWD raised water rates by 12%. In May 2006, CCWD announced plans to raise water rates by another 7%. How can the Supervisors’ justify a buildout plan in which current residents are being forced to subsidize (via higher water rates) more traffic-inducing future housing development?
 
Kevin J. Lansing
Half Moon Bay

Touched by stories of the lives of youngsters half a world away, a group of Coastside children wanted to help.  The result is a talent show on Friday, June 2nd at 7 p.m. at Mariner’s Community Church in Half Moon Bay featuring music, dance, and acrobatic performances. The show will be followed by a teen dance showcasing the Rockidztra rock band.  Proceeds from the event will go to Keeping Hope Alive, that pays for the schooling of a group of 200 orphans in Kenya, Africa.