On August 16, 2011 the Coastside Fire Protection District(CFPD) Board held a Special Meeting.  It was called on short notice.  Darin Boville was not notified to video record it.  So, citizens won’t get to see what the Board did.  Two citizens were in the audience that day, spoke and saw what happened.  I was one of them.

The Coastside Fire former employee retirement CalPERS debt was thought to be about $5M in 2009.  This year it was estimated to be $9M to $13.2M.  According to the actuarial consultant the Coastside Board hired, John Bartel, the CalPERS’s Board’s August 17, 2011 action raised Coastside’s termination debt to $13.5M to $19.8M.  CalPERS pools are black boxes.  When a CalPERS customer asks what the size of their debt in a pool is, it can take half a year for CalPERS to provide a range like $13.5M to $19.8M. When CalPERS unilaterally moves a customer agency’s contract form one pool to another, the customer can get hit with millions in additional debt.  When the CalPERS Board votes like they did on August 17 to change actuarial assumptions, a contracting agency debt can go up 50%.  The current interest rate CalPERS charges on debt is 7.75%.

Today, the total combined Coastside Fire liability for former employee CalPERS retirement plan and former employee family medical plan is larger than the HMB Beachwood settlement.  Coastside Fire has roughly $8M in annual revenue.  For comparison, the City of HMB has roughly a $10M budget.  Compounding the problem is the City of Vallejo’s experience in Federal Bankruptcy Court.  Even under dire conditions for Vallejo, the CalPERS obligation had seniority.  Four of eight of Vallejo’s Fire Stations have been closed.  As one citizen in Vallejo quipped, “Our Fire Department is a pension plan masquerading as a Fire Department.”  So, bankruptcy or dissolving Coastside Fire District won’t extinguish Coastside’s CalPERS obligation.

I think a different set of questions needs to be asked of the public regarding pot grows on public lands.

Those being ...

1) How do you feel about trespassers being allowed to camp anywhere they want on local public lands for the purpose of growing crops that other farmers have to grow on private land or on public land with a permit?

2) How do you feel about them being able to have & use firearms, pesticides and poisons to kill the local native wildlife who are otherwise protected on public lands, in the name of protecting their un-permitted crop?

3) How do you feel about them being able to steal water from the public or from adjacent landowners for their un-permitted crop, and the usually attendant destruction of riparian habitat, seeps, springs and so forth?

4) How do you feel about them creating a hostile and threatening environment for other public land users including hikers, bicyclists, equestrians and others?

These are (among) the questions that need to be asked.

And if these questions ARE asked, the answers will quite likely be much less tolerant of pot growers illegally using public lands.

It would also likely help if the media quit referring to these destructive plots as “gardens”, and to those who perpetuate the destruction as “farmers.”

DUI, two kids returned to their parents with a fire safety lecture after starting a hillside fire, vehicle vandalism in El Granada, auto burglary on Highway 1 at Tunitas Creek Road, and vandalism of the Sheriff’s Moon Ridge Substation:

Deputies arrived at the Moon Ridge Substation and noticed that unknown suspects threw a brick at the substation’s front door and side window causing damage.

Community members considering more involvement in local government still have time to run for a seat on the Midcoast Community Council.

There are three open seats for the MCC which will be on the ballot on the November 8, 2011 election. The filing period ended on August 12 but has been extended to Wednesday August 17.  Those interested in running should feel free to contact any current council member or elections specialist Megan Asmus [email protected]

The Midcoast Community Council is an elected Municipal Advisory Council to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, serving the citizens of the unincorporated Midcoast in Miramar, El Granada, Princeton, Moss Beach, and Montara. The Midcoast Community Council is comprised of seven members locally elected to four year terms. The Council currently holds regular meetings at 7:30 PM on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month (except November and December) at the Seton Coastside Medical Center in Moss Beach.

More information on the Council can be found at http://mcc.sanmateo.org/about.html.  Community members are encouraged to contact current Council members with questions.

A warrant arrest on Higgins Purisima Road, residential burglary in Princeton, and a possible professional dispute in Princeton:

Deputies were dispatched to a report of an assault. Two locksmiths got into an argument and one grabbed the other by the throat while raising a crow bar at him. The suspect fled the scene before Deputies arrived.

Pescadero Grown!

Market Hours: Every Thursday from 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

This week at the market: August 11, 2011

Farmers and Producers:

Addwater Farm
Blue House Farm
Blue Ocean Smokehouse
Del Sur Farm
Echo Valley Farm
Farmageddon
Fifth Crow Farm
Fly Girl Farm
Fogline Nursery
Harley Farms
La Honda School
Leftcoast Grassfed
Westland Nursery

Paul Brisker at the Market!

A Pescadero resident, Paula is a vocalist, songwriter & guitarist. San Francisco born and raised in the Bay Area, Paula has toured all over the country promoting her music and debut CD Narrow Road. Ross Hogarth - Producer, Engineer for Melissa Etheridge, Jewel and Ziggy Marley, writes “Every now and then I get the opportunity to be involved in making records that are and will be timeless in quality. Narrow Road is one of those for me. I am pleased with the result and loved the process of sharing in its creation. I look forward to what the future holds for Paula and feel that the best is even yet to come for her and her fans.”

Discover what tiny honeybees do and enter into the world of the honeybee.A fun and educational workshop,offering a look into a working hive will be presented on Sat.Aug.13 at 10:00a.m. at Quarry Park Community Garden. Avid Beekeepers Gary and Teri Giorgetti will be educating us on the lives and work of the amazing honeybee. Fun for the whole family, so please join us and help spread the word on the importance of the mighty honeybee.

Friends of Quarry Park Community Garden

Pam Peirce is the author of the bestselling regional food gardening book Golden Gate Gardening, just out in its Third Edition. She has written several other books, including Wildly Successful Plants: Northern California, on regional heirloom garden ornamentals and Controlling Vegetable Pests, a book on using IPM to manage food crop pests. Pam teaches horticulture at City College of San Francisco, writes the weekly column Golden Gate Gardener for the San Francisco Chronicle (sfgate.com), and her website, pampeirce.com links to her blog, Golden Gate Gardener. 

In this workshop, you will learn what you can grow and when to plant it to keep your garden producing tasty food from fall to spring. (Good news: Very little gardening is required in the cold, rainy months - mostly you harvest.) Are you clueless about cauliflower, bemused by Brussels sprouts, puzzled by peas? Pam will explain the best schedule for planting these and many other crops, tell us the best varieties, and include pest management tips to ensure success. In the garden, Pam will demonstrate some very special techniques you can use to escape otherwise troublesome pests.

The Book Club for Incarcerated Youth program provides educational and life skill support to teen girls and boys at the County’s youth incarceration facility.  In order to connect these students with literacy and library services, San Mateo County Library has been offering a book club for five years run by library staff and volunteers.

The program is looking for volunteers to help out next year. The time commitment is only two hours a night over four consecutive Thursday nights or one other weeknight to be determined at this meeting. Those who are new at this will go out in pairs with more experienced staff. To find out more about this program, there will be an informational and planning meeting on Wednesday, August 17th at 12:30 pm at San Mateo County Library, Administration Building, 125 Lessingia Court (formerly 25 Tower Road), San Mateo.

If you would like to help change a life through books, please contact Pamela Bilz, San Mateo County Library, 650-312-5263.

Well, Marketeers, I hope you did not miss our 15 minutes of fame, otherwise known as summer.

I have been doing my best to remain optimistic and retain my sunny disposition despite the lack of reinforcements on that score.  And while there has been an agreed dearth of warmth on the Coast this, uh, summer, there have been plenty of occasions to break out the grill and gather ‘round.

Some, quite unplanned.

Imagine, if you will, enjoying an impromptu summers’ night supper with eight unexpected but otherwise beloved people (all with valid passports!)  that arrive en masse and quite unannounced, dressed in their best summer woolens, anticipating a party only to find they were woefully misinformed about the date, time and nature of a certain Milestone Celebration, commemorated weeks ago. Happily for everyone involved I had spruced up the garden, bathed and was actually dressed at the time they appeared, hungry, festive and undaunted by my obvious bewilderment and state of deshabille.