Hikers, dogwalkers, and neighbors in Montara have been watching a mysterious construction site take shape in the open space near Highway 1 on the northern edge of town. This week in particular, the activity has increased with a gravel road and chain-link fencing.

All that earth-moving equipment is actually building wetlands.  As mitigation for taking about an acre of wetlands in the building of the Devil’s Slide Tunnel, Caltrans is replacing and restoring four acres of wetlands in Montara on the Rancho Corral de Tierra land owned owned by the Peninsula Open Space Trust [Google satellite picture].

Much of the area nearby is already wetlands, covered with wetlands vegetation. The project will create seasonal wetlands that will flood in the rainy season, mimicking a natural cycle, except that it will be drained by a culvert under the highway.

According to Jeff Weiss with Caltrans, "We’re removing all the existing vegetation and replacing it with native wetlands vegetation."

Weiss said that the $1.3 million wetlands project has been passed by the San Mateo County Mosquito Abatement District.

The eagerly anticipated November 3 meeting of the Cabrillo Unified School District (CUSD) board has been pushed back until November 9. At this meeting, the board will take up the decision, delayed from the board’s last meeting, whether to choose Cunha as the site for the district’s middle school.

The rescheduling is significant because this means that the decision will take place after the November 8 election, in which the site of the new middle school is an important issue. Although the city council has no control over the decision, many people opposed to the current city council majority have blamed it for the delays in building of the school.  At the last school board meeting, at least one member of the public accused the board of delaying its vote in order to deny incumbents Grady and Ferreira some good news before the election.

CUSD president Dwight Wilson tried to get the board to vote for the Cunha site at the last meeting, but Jolanda Schreurs and Charles Gardner wanted more time to consider the decision. Roy Salume joined them in asking for a delay so that the purchase of adjoining lots could be explored.

Wilson said that he and superintendent John Bayless decided to delay the meeting,  "We’ve had logistical problems.  Support staff and two principals have been out or sick. Normally, we don’t have our meetings so close together, but this one was originally scheduled to avoid the Veteran’s Day holiday." 

The County Times has endorsed Ferreira, Grady, and McClung; and the Review has endorsed Grady, Patridge, and Skinner.

Read their endorsements. Each is surprising in its own way. Click on the comments link below the headline and let us know what you think about their choices and reasoning.

Here are a couple of photos of road signs that were sent to me by readers.  I’ll be glad when the election is over and I don’t have to write about politics any more. 

Darin Boville

You’ve probably seen this sign, unless you never go north of downtown. We thought it was a particularly calm and clever response to a problem that is no doubt infuriating some members of the LCP.

From Coastsider’s endorsement of Ferreira, Grady, and Skinner: "In the last couple of weeks, signs supporting Patridge, McClung, and Muteff have sprung up on nearly every vacant lot and farm field on the Coastside. I keep asking myself, What do the owners of those undeveloped lots know about those candidates that I don’t?"

Heal the Bay has released its 2005 California Summer Beach Report Card [PDF]. Overall, Coastside beaches did well, with 18 beaches in San Mateo County receiving A’s.  However, Pillar Point Harbor at Capistrano Avenue Beach [Google map], which received the County’s only F grade. Also, both Fitzgerald Marine Reserve at San Vicente Creek and Venice Beach at Frenchman’s Creek received grades of C.

However, for the most recent 4-week period, Pillar Point Harbor received a C and Venice Beach a D, with all other County beaches getting an A or A+. [Report card at Heal the Bay]

The problem at Pillar Point Harbor is long-standing. The site suffers from lack of circulation because of the breakwater, plenty of birds, and other sources of pollution from its use as a harbor.

San Francisco County received 11 A’s and 2 B’s, and Santa Cruz received 11 A’s but two of its beaches were closed this summer.

According to Heal the Bay, the overall water quality at California beaches this past summer was very good. Of the approximately 450 monitoring locations throughout California, 407 locations (91%) received very good-to-excellent water quality marks (365 A’s and 42 B’s). There were 41 locations (9%)  that received fair-to-poor water quality marks (20 C’s, 6 D’s and 15 F’s). Overall, California’s summer beach water quality grades were slightly better than the summers of 2004 and 2003.

The grades are based on dry weather water quality data provided collected between Memorial Day and September 30, 2005. 

Heal the Bay

This month, Pillar Point Harbor received a C and Venice Beach a D.

In its endorsements for the Montara Water and Sanitary District, the Half Moon Bay Review seems to have gotten confused.

In endorsing Paul Perkovic, Bob Ptacek, and Peggy Ruse for seats on the board, the Review concluded:

That leaves Jim Harvey the odd man out. He was appointed to his current seat three years ago and generally agrees with the other incumbents on issues of planning and water supply. He has been a good steward; we simply found him the least strong of four good candidates.

Actually, although Jim Harvey was appointed to his seat three years ago, it was a two-year seat and he stood for election in 2003. In that election, he was endorsed by the Review over Peggy Ruse [Review’s 2003 endorsements], who was running against him for the two-year seat, and Harvey soundly defeated Ruse [PDF of election results], with 55% of the votes to Ruse’s 8% (she was fourth in a four-way race).

Coastsiders have written to the Review to set the record straight, but none of their letters appeared in Wednesday’s paper, the first after the paper’s MWSD endorsement appeared.

Review Managing Editor Clay Lambert replied to Coastsider’s email asking what happened:

I think even the folks who complain about the newspaper (at least those who take the time to correspond) know that I print virtually every letter I get—including those that are critical of me. Frequent writers also know that I print them in the order in which they are received. I ran out of room for about a half-dozen last week. I will make every effort to get them all in this week.

Jim Harvey, a good and thoughtful man who impressed me very much during our interview, was originally appointed and subsequently elected. That could have been more clear in our endorsement.

We have a lot of challenges with the County’s determination to expand the population faster than our supply of water. And we’re still digesting the purchase of our water system. Fortunately, the current members of the Montara Water and Sanitary District are sincere, hard-working and smart.

We don’t object to the idea of adding new blood to a board, but it’s difficult to make a case for Peggy Ruse.  I recommend reading her statement at Smartvoter. A lot of it is nearly incomprehensible. I don’t understand her argument we should vote for her because no resident of Moss Beach is on the board. She presents no support for her pie-in-the-sky proposal to bring Hetch Hetchy water into the district with a pipeline through the Devil’s Slide Tunnel. And she does not support her allegations that the board has a "hidden agenda", other than their endorsement by the League for Coastside Protection, which she says has a "reputation for being no-growth". That charge is leveled at the LCP all the time, but no one (least of all Peggy Ruse) has demonstrated it.

Residents of Montara and Moss Beach are lucky to have their current water board and we recommend voting for the incumbents.

I can’t say that anyone learned anything new at the Chamber of Commerce’s debate for Half Moon Bay City Council on Tuesday night.  Most of the audience had come to support their favorite candidates, and the candidates didn’t say very much that was new.

Grady was stolid, Patridge was well-spoken, Skinner seemed like a very nice man, Muteff seemed like a very angry man, McClung seemed dazed, and Ferreira seemed avuncular.

I may post more later, but one particularly interesting part of the debate revolved around lawsuits. There was one mildly exciting moment at the very end.  In his conclusion, George Muteff very effectively waved a copy of the blacked-out due diligence report on the new park.  Mike Ferreira dedicated his conclusion to saying the city had redacted worst-case scenarios from their lawyers, and that the redacted paragraphs amounted to a manual on how to sue the city and stop the park. Ferreira noted that the judge agreed and allowed the redactions.

Speaking of lawyers, I did figure out one thing that I had been gnawing on, or had been gnawing on me, for a while.  George Muteff and his supporters have been pushing hard to make the city’s legal expenses a campaign issue. It seems backwards. The city is never the plaintiff. I don’t understand why Muteff isn’t angry at all the people suing his city.

Somebody, presumably a supporter of Muteff’s, lobbed a question into the debate about all the money the city is spending on lawyers. City Council members Ferreira and Grady made what I thought was a reasonable point: if you fold up every time some out-of-town attorney drops a lawsuit on you, the result is not going to be fewer lawsuits, it’s going to be more lawsuits. That’s the way it works with bullies.

Patridge, Muteff, and McClung took another approach. Patridge wanted to get rid of the city’s law firm and hire a full-time attorney. Muteff said to "Stop putting the Coastal Commission ahead of Half Moon Bay residents."  He talks like that—in folksy and common-sensical non sequiturs.

I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes. I finally realized tonight why they’re making all this fuss about attorney fees. Not only can you save a bundle by cutting legal expenses, but you can strip the city of its ability to enforce the Coastal Act, and its own laws for that matter. It’s what they call a win-win.

To all my Coastside neighbors:

I’ve been a Coastsider myself for more than 15 years, but most of this time has been spent commuting and working across the hill or across the country and only coming home to this beautiful place on weekends and late evenings.  During this period, my giving of time and money mostly reflected my National priorities and the needs of my employment community rather than being locally oriented to the Coastside. 

Lately I’ve had more time to become aware that this San Mateo Coastside I choose to love and call home only exists as it is because of a community of residents who are low-income, working poor; farm workers, nursery workers, fishermen or service workers working long hours at low wages and living with their families under hard conditions. 

Come join the Coastside Opportunity Center this Friday evening, October 28, from 7:00 - 9:00 pm at the IDES Hall, 735 Main Street, Half Moon Bay, at a community reception and fundraiser to hear about "The Other Coastside - the Invisible Working Poor."  Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be provided, along with live music by a local jazz trio and a slide and video presentation.  There is no admission charge, though tax-deductible contributions will be requested. (RSVP to 726-9071 ext. 19.) 

You’ll have a chance to hear about the work of the Coastside Opportunity Center, the only nonprofit multi-service agency on the Coast whose mission it is to provide a wide range of human service programs which create a social safety net for the working poor, those who are homeless, families, the elderly and the disabled from Montara to Pescadero.
We’d love to see you there.

Dell Williams
Member, Board of Directors
Coastside Opportunity Center

NOTICE: I accidentally deleted the original version of this story, with all the attached comments. My deepest apologies to everyone who took the trouble to post.—Barry Parr

Point Montara’s Fire Protection District’s board has been flirting with disaster until recently.  Last year, the District unilaterally cancelled a long-standing service contract with the Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District, for no clear reason, with no plan of how they were going to put out fires in Montara and Moss Beach after the contract ended.
During this period, very few District residents attended the meetings, much less understood what was going on. Vince Williams stands out as one person who did attend the meetings and worked hard drawing attention to the mess on the fire board. It’s likely that without Vince’s hard work, we’d be facing a much tougher situation than the current plan to merge the Point Montara and Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District.

Vince Williams is the only candidate for Point Montara Fire Protection District who has earned our unqualified recommendation.

Part of the reason for the mess in Point Montara is that two of the three directors are former firefighters who seem to be more interested in rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies in the Half Moon Bay district than their fiduciary responsibility to District residents.

Electing former firefighters to fire boards sort of seems like a good idea, until you really think about it.  There is an inherent conflict of interest between their duties to district residents and their teammates in the firehouse.

For that reason, we give a qualified recommendation to incumbent director Ginny McShane. Although she shared in the District’s go-it-alone madness over the last year, she has seen the light and has fewer ties to the firehouse than former firefighters Bruce McKimmie and Alex King.