CORRECTION: The original SF Gate story is out of date. We’ll post the correct, final list when it becomes available.

San Mateo’s state beaches, and the Montara lighthouse, are on the list for closure by the state, along with a host of parks in Santa Cruz county, as part of its current budget deal. From the Tom Stienstra in the Chron:

San Mateo County

Half Moon Bay State Beach: Protected beaches span four miles north, with the Coastside Trail extending all the way to Pillar Point Harbor.

Butano Redwoods State Park: Campsites nestled in redwoods, including the least-known trail camp in the Bay Area, along with outstanding hiking (redwood trails) and mountain biking (Butano Rim) make this one of my personal top favorites.

Others of note: Portola Redwoods State Park, Gray Whale Cove State Beach, Montara State Beach, Pescadero State Beach, Point Montara Light Station, Pomponio State Beach, San Gregorio State Beach, Bean Hollow State Beach.

Santa Cruz County

Año Nuevo State Natural Reserve: This is home of the largest mainland breeding colony of elephant seals on the Pacific Coast. One of the best easy wildlife walks in the state.

Big Basin Redwoods State Park: Here is the No. 1 year-round hiking park in California, with the prettiest series of waterfalls outside of Yosemite, outstanding campgrounds, including backpack sites, and the heart of the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail. Again, there’s no way anybody is going to keep me out.

Castle Rock State Park: Add it up: Goat Rock’s climbing and views, Castle Falls, Trail Camp, trailhead for Skyline-to-the Sea, picnic sites, views of Big Basin Redwoods and beyond to Monterey Bay. What more could you ask for?

Wilder Ranch State Park: This is the best mountain biking park in California, with a terraced foothill landscape that provides flat spots amid climbs (along with trail along ocean bluff). Access extends to UC Santa Cruz.

Others of note: Año Nuevo State Park, Burleigh H. Murray Ranch, Castro Adobe (Rancho San Andres), Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, Lighthouse Field State Beach, Manresa State Beach, Natural Bridges State Beach, New Brighton State Beach, Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, Seacliff State Beach, Sunset State Beach, the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, Thornton State Beach, Twin Lakes State Beach.

A 25-year-old Bank of America banker running for Half Moon Bay City Council is profiled by the County Times.

Council member Bonnie McClung has told the County Times she’s not planning to run for re-election. With three seats up for grabs this year, at least one incumbent out of the race, and the Beachwood debacle hanging over the election, this year’s race could be a free-for-all in which anything could happen.

"The average person can’t afford to see their dreams come true out here. I can’t afford it," he said on Monday during a lunchtime coffee break. "If I wanted to be a business owner in Half Moon Bay, it would be too hard, too expensive. And we’re not even allowing the one percent of growth (approved by voters in 2004)." ...

Property rights, "smart growth," environmental stewardship and better local services for youths and seniors are the focus of Hoelzel’s campaign, which will officially kick off when he submits his nomination papers to City Hall in the next couple of weeks.  ...

"I would have undone those roadblocks and made sure he (Keenan) could have built in an environmentally sustainable way," said Hoelzel, referring to Beachwood.

"Growth is a bad word around here but it’s what is going to get us out of this financial state," he continued. "That $33 million — that’s going to affect my generation, and there’s not going to be any prosperity if we’re going to be paying those dollars out for wetlands."

The deadline for filing is August 8, but it will be extended to August 12 if any incumbent does not file nomination papers.

Come to the Half Moon Bay Library on Sunday July 26th at 2:00PM to hear Suzanne Emerson from Emerson Environmental explain how you can keep those wasted dollars in your pocket while making your home comfortable and happy.

Supervisor Rich Gordon’s next Coastside office hours will be Thursday, July 23 from 10am until noon at the Sheriff’s Coastside Substation in Moss Beach.

This is an excellent opportunity for Coastsiders to share their concerns with the Board of Supervisors.

We’ve been referring to a lot of source documents in our MCTV coverage. We’ve uploaded them all and linked to them individually in case you need to look something up. We’re including a list of MCTV’s directors, which is something we get asked for from time to time.

MCTV Bylaws

• MCTV bylaws 1985(?) to 2008
• MCTV bylaws 2008 to 2009: revised without sending list of changes to MCTV members to eliminate independent board seats, lower barriers to conflicts of interest by board members, and potentially other unknown changes. Does not show differences from previous bylaws.
• MCTV bylaws 2009: eliminated members ownership and made MCTV board self-appointing and shows differences from 2008 bylaws.
• Protest letter and timeline of 2008 MCTV board election
• MCTV’s letter to members explaining why it eliminated member ownership in 2009

MCTV tax filings (IRS Form 990)

• MCTV Budget analysis by Coastsider.
• MCTV Salary Survey by Coastsider
• 2005
• 2006
• 2007
• Guidestar: Download Forms 990 for MCTV and other nonprofits

MCTV agreements

• MCTV agreement with San Mateo County
• MCTV agreement with Half Moon Bay

Grand Jury Report

• Grand Jury report on MCTV
• Grand Jury report attachments: All these documents are linked individually from this page, but this is included for the record. 74MB .doc file. Not available online from Grand Jury. Includes original MCTV bylaws, MCTV county charter, MCTV agreement with Half Moon Bay, MCTV 2007 Form 990, MCTV 2009 Bylaws (redline of 2008 bylaws).
• MCTV Letter in response to MCTV report
• Barry Parr’s correction of MCTV’s response

MCTV Board of Directors

• Constance Malach, President, El Granada
• Michael Day, Vice President/Secretary, El Granada
• Whitney Brooks, Director, Pacifica
• Gina Holmes, Director, El Granada
• Chris Madison, Director, El Granada
• Rich Pierceall, Director, Moss Beach
• Jack Prejza, Director, Half Moon Bay

I’ve mailed the attached letter correcting significant errors in MCTV’s response to the Grand Jury report.

Supervisor Rich Gordon, San Mateo County
Mayor John Muller, Half Moon Bay

Dear Supervisor Gordon and Mayor Muller:

I was heartened to see an independent investigative body, the county’s Civil Grand Jury, investigate MCTV. In the end, the Grand Jury recognized many of the same issues I have noted with the station.

I don’t want to replay the entire Grand Jury hearing in letters to the Supervisors, but I must correct multiple mischaracterizations of the facts and my own position by MCTV in its recent response.

Let me start by saying I have been a long-time supporter of MCTV. I extensively covered the station’s 20th anniversary celebration on my website, Coastsider; I initiated and helped the station write a grant application to make it possible to deliver their recordings of public meetings on the Web; and I strongly supported using Coastside franchise fees to fund MCTV to the Supervisors in 2006.

MCTV continues to assert copyright of public records

MCTV says, "The [Grand Jury] Report is in error when it states that MCTV reserves the right to restrict the use of public meeting programming."

MCTV continues to assert that it holds the copyright to these recordings, and therefore "reserves the right to restrict the use of public meeting programming". The station charges the public $50 per meeting for copies and does not permit contracting agencies to provide copies to the public.

I only became a critic of the station when it repeatedly refused to allow permission to reuse newsworthy clips from publicly-financed recordings of public agency meetings. I maintain that these recordings are (1) works for hire that are the property of the agencies that contracted MCTV to create them, and (2) an important part of the public record that cannot be kept from the public sphere through the use of copyright and copying fees.

MCTV has only been responsive to appeals to an elected board of directors

Despite more than a year of appeals on my part, MCTV only instituted its (relatively) open licensing policy less than a week after I announced that I was running a slate for the station’s board of directors.

I invite you to do the math.

Imagine my embarrassment when I discovered - way, way, way after I hit the "send" button last week - that I had the dates all wrong for the Senior Coastsider "Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet" event.  It was not last week, no, no.  It is scheduled for August 15th , with another opportunity on September 12th to rid yourself of the trouble and hazard of having ( or having your parents, older neighbors or ill friends having ) a confusing stash of expired or outdated medicines. 

So clean out those cabinets in the coming weeks - and if you run across excess toiletries ( unopened) from all your travels, or lovely but not-your-type guest soaps that your Auntie Wilma sends every year, why bring them on down the Market on July 25th and donate them to Puente de la Costa Sur.  You’ll have a tidier home, and Puente will make certain to get those very useful items to the hardworking men and women of our coastal community who often are in the untenable position of having to chose between being clean or being hungry. 

While you’re in the clean-out-the-corners mode, should you discover an excess of bicycles in good working order that are not being used, sheets, towels or other household linens, why the folks at Puente can use those as well.  I’ll have a few of their Wish Lists on hand tomorrow, so swing by and get one if you like.

To prepare yourself for or recover from a whirlwind of domestic reclamation, pick up some berries this week, why doncha?  They are chockablock with vitamins and fiber galore to give you the requisite zip, vim and vigor to make short work of tedious tasks. There are many kinds at the Markets these days, ( berries, that is, though we have no shortage of tedious task to deal with - ever spend an hour of your Saturday picking up toothpicks off of asphalt?) and all are at their peak of lush yumminess.  Of course, I could provoke you to pie, but instead, as homage to the unlikely but powerful combinations of occurrences going on in the world, I suggest you try something different.

Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) has transferred three properties totaling 374 acres to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) for permanent management and protection. The properties include 32 acres in the hills east of Half Moon Bay, Bluebrush Canyon (seven miles southeast of Half Moon Bay along Purisima Creek Road), and a strategically located parcel east of Lexington Reservoir, near Los Gatos.

In an editorial in today’s paper, the Half Moon Bay Review says that the county and the city should pay attention to what’s happening at MCTV:

With respect to MCTV, the Coastside’s cable-access channel, the grand jury reported what we all already knew: The channel runs a lot of canned programming and, particularly until recently, hasn’t exactly been a model of innovation. In fact, it the organization’s leadership has been engaged in a series of moves to retrench and protect the status quo, changing bylaws to squeeze out meddlesome members and cement the power of a small handful of paid employees and board members. ...

The city and county government don’t seem to care that dissent within the membership has been effectively quashed.