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.

I guess if Sheriff takes your picture, it’s going to make you look like a felon.  The picture at right is of my brand-new press card from the Sheriff Horsley’s office down in Redwood City.

I’ve been publishing Coastsider for nearly a year and I’ve generally been treated like any other news source by everyone I need to talk to.  With a few exceptions, people return my calls and are willing to talk to me, even when I’m reporting bad news. The folks at the Sheriff’s substation in Moss Beach, including Lieutenants Quinlan and Shiveley, have been helpful and responsive. They’ve treated me well, even when I was the first reporter (or photographer) on the scene at a murder in Moss Beach.

Generally, my Coastsider business card has been enough to make it clear that I’m more than just a gawker. Most recently, I rode on the press bus with the Review and County Times to the Devil’s Slide tunnel groundbreaking.

However, it also became clear that if I need to deal with the police or fire departments on the scene of breaking news, it would be useful to have press credentials.

I have had conversations with the police where I had to make it clear to them that I viewed their cooperation with me as First Amendment issue.  And you can imagine my reaction to the official who complained that I had an unfair advantage over the local weekly when it came to reporting breaking news. I will explain indignantly to anyone who’ll listen that police can’t be in the position of deciding who gets to be considered press. But I do understand that on the scene the last thing they want to do is to vet reporters.

This press card is a huge milestone for Coastsider and a genuine recognition of the impact we’re having in the community.

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 results of survey of Montara Water and Sanitary District customers by an anti-public ownership think tank [PDF of survey] are in and they’re pretty much what you’d expect.

At the end of 2004, residents of Montara Water and Sanitary District received a mysterious survey in the mail. The survey, from the libertarian Reason Public Policy Institute, explained that property taxes had increased as a result of the purchase of the water system from California-American Water Company (owned by the German utilities conglomerate RWE), and then asked them "Would you vote for this measure again knowing what you know now?" At the time, some Coastsiders characterized it as a "push poll".

The researcher, Adrian Moore, has made a career of arguing that private ownership of utilities is better than public ownership. And a number of private utilities, including the former owners of Montara’s water, contribute to his employer. Moore provided an pro-privatization FAQ to something called Coalition Against a Government Takeover which was fighting a public takeover of RWE-owned Kentucky-American Water Company.

If the survey was designed to make public ownership look bad, it has done its job.

By a two-to-one margin (62% to 31%), respondents said that would not vote to buy the water system again [PDF of survey results].

After that, the rest of the results are an anticlimax:

• 62% said the quality of the service was unchanged.
• 67% said the quality of the water was unchanged.
• 47% said the cost of water bills is "worse".
• 71% said the cost of property taxes is "worse".
• 76% said they were aware that Montara and Moss Beach homeowners are paying an additional $169 in property taxes since the bonds were issued to buy the water system.

There are plenty of cautions that should be observed before interpreting this data. The survey was released between Christmas and New Year’s Day—timing that is guaranteed to reduce response rates.  89% of Montara and Moss Beach residents who received the survey did not respond. Also, the survey was clearly biased against public ownership. I strongly recommend you read it for yourself. It focused out the negative (the cost of the bonds) without pointing the positives (local ownership and control of rates) of the acquisition. This could certainly have influenced those opposed to public ownership to respond in greater numbers.

However, because the survey didn’t ask people how they voted in the election, only how they would vote if they could do it over, we’ll never know if the sample was biased. In 2001, 81% of Montara residents voted to issue bonds to buy their water system.

Meanwhile,  Felton in Santa Cruz County is gearing up for an election on whether to buy out their own Cal-Am system.  This data should be very useful to Cal-Am their fight to keep Felton voters from buying them out.

There have been plenty of accusations and jokes about it here on the Coastside, but someone has documented a likely case of a transplanted endangered species at a development site in Sebastopol.

Endangerd Sebastopol Meadowfoam has been found on the site of a controversial development in Sebastopol, and a scientist for the California Department of Fish and Game says it was probably transplanted there by someone who wanted to stop the development. He won’t say how he determined this because he doesn’t want to encourage this kind of activity. But it sounds like maybe there was soil from its original location in its roots.

"People joke about this all the time—stopping a development by putting an endangered plant in its path," said Gene Cooley, a Fish and Game botanist who surveyed the meadowfoam last week. "I have 25 years’ experience with state and federal agencies, and this is the only instance I know of where it’s actually happened."

The fact that this is the first case this Fish & Game scientist has seen is probably more notable than the fact that the endangered species was transplanted.

This week, the Sheriff’s substation in Moss Beach reported an auto burglary, possession of a deadly weapon, theft of a camper shell and two DUI’s.

Click "read more" to see the details.

We’ve increased the number of sections on Coastsider from five (Community, Business, Fun, About Coastsider and Government) to twelve.

Over time, it became clear that most stories were getting dumped into the Community category. This new organization should make it easier to find what you’re looking for, follow issues over time, and to understand what Coastsider is about.

About Coastsider: Information about the site.

Business: Coastside businesses, including fishing and farming.

Community: People and organizations on the Coastside.

Environment: Open space, animals, plants, natural resources and natural history. Includes water and sewer districts, which have a big impact on the local environment. Also includes Peninsula
Open Space Trust and Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.

Events: Organized events on the Coastside.

Government: News about the County Board of Supervisors, Half Moon Bay City Council, Midcoast
Community Council, and other agencies. Doesn’t include water and sewer, which are in Environment, and the school district, which is in schools. Planning has its own category.

Humor: It’s funny. Laugh.

Opinion: Editorials, letters to the editor, and guest columns.

Planning & Development: Local Coastal Plans, park planning, California Coastal Commission, roads,
Devil’s Slide tunnel. Wavecrest is included in this section, although most of the stories are environmental in nature right now.

Police & Fire: Crime and fires, mostly.

Recreation: Outdoor recreation, and some indoor as well.  This is an area I’d really like to expand if you’re interested in writing for Coastsider

Schools: Schools, the school board and its elections. Includes the middle school site, whether it’s at Wavecrest or somewhere else.

I’ve gone back and reclassified most of the stories from 2005 in order to populate the new sections.

The County Times has more information about Peninsual Open Space Trust’s land management, especially dealing with pampas grass.  Because POST’s goal is to transfer land that they buy to other agencies, management is not a big part of their budget. But they are responsible for managing properties while they own them. The articles says that POST’s annual budget for "stewardship" is between $500,000 and $1 million.

The Bella Vista Foundation has awarded Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) a grant in the amount of $30,000 to help complete the removal of pampas grass on the 6,391-acre Cloverdale Coastal Ranch in Pescadero, CA. The Bella Vista Foundation has supported POST’s land management activities on Cloverdale since 2002, granting a total of $130,000 for stewardship activities. As a result of this support Cloverdale Coastal Ranches’ grasslands are much more diverse and healthier than they were several years ago.

Click "read more" to see the rest of the press release.

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."