There’s a short profile of MROSD’s new president, Larry Hassett.  It’s a great story to tell because Hassett wasn’t always a fan of the District:

"At one time, we were going toe-to-toe with the district," Hassett said from his hardware store in Half Moon Bay onTuesday. "We were at odds with them on many an issue."

In an editorial, the San Mateo County Times suggests that the SamTrans by-laws be changed so as to insure that future Samtrans appointments are done fairly, honestly and in the open.

This week, with supervisors Mark Church and Rich Gordon dissenting, the board selected Supervisor Adrienne Tissier to fill a seat on the SamTrans board left vacant by Mike Nevin.

In so doing, the board has perpetuated a more than six-year inequality that finds Daly City residents occupying four of the board’s nine seats.

If you agree, and want to be part of an effort to change the SamTrans by-laws, e-mail me your name.  If there is enough support them perhaps we can put together a groups who could petition the various San Mateo County legislators (Leland Yee, Gene Mullin, Ira Ruskin, Jackie Speier and Joe Simitian) and ask that they change the law.

Richard L. Silver
[email protected]

EDITOR’S NOTE:  I don’t know Ric, so I had some questions about his involvement.  The San Mateo County Times’ Insider column answered some of my questions:  "RAIL activist, political consultant and former county Board of Supervisors clerk Ric Silver is starting a group to lobby for changes to the SamTrans board after recent flaps over appointments. ...Some see Silver’s interest in the issue at this time as curious, since he has not been active on other local transportation issues such as Measure A. Silver said he’s simply interested in the SamTrans board because its budget decisions have a large impact on Caltrain."

Mike Ferreira took me to task for yesterday’s story about Half Moon Bay’s roads.  He’s pretty proud of the work that the city council has done to improve the streets of the city, which have moved up in 2003 from dead last in 2002. And they have good reason to think they did even better in 2004.

According to City Engineer Paul Nagengast, the city council has authorized spending $1.4 million on capital improvements to Half Moon Bay’s roads since 2002, after years of patching, but no capital expenditure at all.  Paul also sent me a list of 44 stretches of road—23,100 feet of street—that have been improved since October 2003. In other words, this process began about the time the MTC study ended.

Finally, I have my own doubts about the MTC’s numbers, since the unincorporated areas of San Mateo County scored better than Half Moon Bay.  But sometimes I wonder whether the County even knows they have roads in Montara.

This week’s report features possession of a controlled substance, warrant arrest, drunkeness on foot and at the wheel, and one residential burglary.

Click "read more" to see the report

Del Valor is closing. The thrift shop, which opened at Purissima and Kelly on April 1, announced at the beginning of Janaury that they will be be closing at the end of the month.

It’s always sad when a business closes, because it represents the end of somebody’s dream. This is also a loss for the community, because Del Valor is a business intended to serve locals.  Del Valor struggled with a location that didn’t generate a lot of foot traffic. According to co-owner Anne Nile, "There wasn’t enough traffic from locals, and not enough people came from over the hill."

Del Valor will remain open until the end of January, offering various sales and specials. Right now, everything in the store is 50% off. At the end of the month, the fixtures will be sold.

Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) elected Larry Hassett, owner of Ocean Shore Hardware and Palo Alto Hardware, President of its Board of Directors at last night’s meeting.  It also elected Jed Cyr Vice President; Pete Siemens Treasurer; Nonette Hanko Secretary. Hassett represents the ward that includes Pescadero and San Gregorio.

Click "read more" to see MROSD’s press release.

Half Moon Bay has some of the worst roads in the Bay Area, and the unincorporated areas of San Mateo County aren’t much better. And if they’re not fixed up, they’re going to start deteriorating faster.  The good news is that their condition is improving.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has released a report that examines, among other things, the condition of Bay Area roads, based on data from 2003 and 2002.

According to data reported by the city and county, Half Moon Bay’s roads were 95th out of 106 localities reporting [PDF] and the incorporated areas of San Mateo County were roughly (no pun intended) 60th.

I spoke with MTC pavement maven Theresa Romell, who told me that with a condition of "fair", Half Moon Bay’s roads were in danger of deteriorating much more quickly if they are not repaired right away. HMB roads’ Pavement Condition Index did move up from 48 to 55 between 2002 and 2003. The PCI is derived from the amount of damage, from cracks to potholes, per inspected unit of road.

Unincorporated San Mateo County roads, with a PCI of 63, aren’t that much better.

UPDATE:  City Council member Mike Ferreira and City Engineer Paul Nagengast dispute some of the findings of this study. I’ve posted a followup story.

Metropolitan Transportation Commission

When a road reaches a condition of "fair", its condition deteriorates much more quickly if it is not repaired.  Half Moon Bay is near the top of the "fair" distribution and the County is near the bottom of "good".

The California Coastal Commission has told San Mateo County that it should not have waived a Coastal Development Permit for the filming of "Memoirs of a Geisha" at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. According to Susan Craig, Coastal Planner with the Commission’s office In Santa Cruz,  the waiver was improperly granted because "temporary events" must last less than two weeks, but the construction of the set, filming, and teardown took longer.

The Commission doesn’t plan any further enforcement, but they have made it clear to the County that a permit would be required for this sort of thing in the future.

Supervisor Rich Gordon told me, "I’m blown away by what was agreed to by County staff. But by the time we found out, the county had a contract with the film company."  He noted that the county has renegotiated to improve the terms of the restoration agreement.

Gordon has asked for a complete report on commercial use of county facilities to be delivered to the Board of Supervisors some time in mid-March. His concern is that decisions of this type should be made by the Board of Supervisors or the Parks and Recreation or Planning Commission—not by County staff.

Thirty fishermen from the Pillar Point Harbor fishing fleet met managers from all 13 national marine sanctuaries around the country at the Harbor House in Princeton to discuss how to maintain sustainable fisheries, according to a report by Amelia Hansen in the SM County Times.

Barbara Emley, a commercial salmon fisherman and chair of the Gulf of the Farallones advisory council, said fishermen often see things out on the ocean that may be of interest to scientists.

"We started seeing sunfish — from the size of a Volkswagen to the size of a dinner plate," Emley told the crowd. "We talked about it on the radio, we exchanged recipes, but we didn’t tell anybody else about it. Maybe, we thought, this would be of interest to an oceanographer.’

Discussions included consideration of moving the sanctuary office from Half Moon Bay to the harbor.