The La Honda Fire Brigade will have its annual general membership meeting on Thursday, July 20 at 8pm in the La Honda fire station. The board of directors will deliver its annual report, and members will be elected to any open seats on the board.

The League for Coastside Protection has created a series of charts showing travel times for the morning and evening commutes in June and July.  Using data extracted from 511.org, the charts dramatically show that the morning commute has worsened this week, and that the evening commute from Highway 280 to Half Moon Bay is more than 30 minutes for two hours a day.  The morning commute from Montara to Half Moon Bay varies widely, averaging about half an hour, but going as high as 45 minutes at its worst.

The charts shown here are for one day only—Wednesday July 12.

It’s notable how erratic the morning traffic times are.  Checking the times on 511.org before you leave the house is unlikely to tell you what kind of traffic you’ll encounter.

Half Moon Bay firefighters distributed this flyer in advance of the July 10 meeting of the Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District board.  This flyer has been mentioned a couple of times in the discussion of the county grand jury’s report on why the Half Moon Bay and Point Montara fire districts should be consolidated and outsourced.

Comments are closed on this story, but you’re invited to participate in the discussion of grand jury’s report.

The regular monthly meeting of the Cabrillo Unified School District has been cancelled.

San Mateo County Resource Conservation District (RCD) announces the recent appointments of Jack Olsen and T.J. Glauthier to its Board of Directors.  The mission of the RCD is to help people protect, conserve, and restore natural resources through information, education, and technical assistance programs. The RCD is a public agency dedicated to the protection of the 157,000 acres of coastline in San Mateo County including all watersheds in the county that drain into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

The California Supreme Court refused Wal-Mart’s appeal of a ban on certain types of big box stores in Turlock, according to the Chronicle.  Wal-Mart was appealing an appeals court decision that said, "While zoning ordinances may not legitimately be used to control economic competition, they may be used to address the urban/suburban decay."

The April 5 ruling by the Court of Appeal in Fresno upheld an ordinance enacted in 2004 by Turlock (Stanislaus County) that was backed by neighborhood supermarkets and labor unions. The court, setting a statewide precedent, said local governments can enact such restrictions to prevent the collapse of local businesses and resulting urban blight.

...

Turlock has a Wal-Mart store but responded to the company’s plans for a supercenter by passing the ordinance in 2004. Without mentioning Wal-Mart, the law prohibits any retail store larger than 100,000 feet that devotes more than 5 percent of its space to nontaxable items such as groceries. The City Council said the purpose was to preserve neighborhood shopping centers.

Coastside County Water District (CCWD) is looking to fill the vacancy created by John Muller’s resignation from the CCWD board to join the Half Moon Bay City Council.

Applicants should submit "a brief statement of interest and qualifications" to the district by Thursday, August 3. The board plans to fill the vacancy at its next regular meeting on Tuesday, August 8. Candidates for the position must reside in and be registered to vote in the district.

The candidate appointed would serve the remainder of Muller’s term, which ends November, 2007.

Communities are struggling to fill the empty hulks left by Albertson’s and other grocery stores, reports the Chronicle. Some have been replaced with movie theaters. Some have been vacant for years.

Phil Tucker, special projects coordinator for the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1179, said that Contra Costa County has seen seven supermarkets close in the past five years, with only two of them turned back into grocery stores. Another was converted into housing units, and the rest remain vacant.

...

But even when a supermarket site gets filled with a new tenant, it is not always the one that the community wants. For instance, in Cherryland, an unincorporated section of Alameda County, residents expressed strong interest in replacing an old Albertson’s on Mission Boulevard in the Creekside Shopping Center with another supermarket. Instead it was replaced with a 99-cent store.

Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (CA-14) will hold Town Hall Meetings in Half Moon Bay on Saturday, July 15th from 10am to 11:30am at the I.D.E.S. Hall at 735 Main Street. She will discuss her work on the House Intelligence Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, including the new Medicare Prescription Drug program, the federal budget, disaster response and preparedness, American competitiveness, and the war in Iraq. All constituents are invited to attend and share their concerns with Rep. Eshoo.

For more information, including assistance with directions, please visit Rep. Eshoo’s website at http://eshoo.house.gov or call her District Office at (650) 323-2984, (831) 335-2020 or (408) 245-2339.

Disclosure: Coastsider is a media sponsor of this event.

“Outstanding in Their Fields: A Day on the Farm,” a tour highlighting the farms, farmers and what’s growing on the San Mateo coast,  will be held on Saturday, July 29th, the Committee for Green Foothills announced today.  Reservations are still available for this daylong guided tour.

The bus tour will visit four local farms between Half Moon Bay and Año Nuevo and will include a lunch and dessert prepared from local produce.  “If you ever wanted to learn more about farming on the coastside, this is the time to do it,” said Holly Van Houten, executive director for Committee for Green Foothills. “This is a special opportunity to meet some of the farmers who grow our food locally.”

The tour grew out of efforts to support the heritage and sustainability of family farming on the San Mateo county coast.  “We realized to protect open space on the coast, we needed to work closely with the local farming community to preserve their ability to farm and to help people connect to the land around them,” said Lennie Roberts, legislative advocate for the Committee.  “We’re pleased to be partnering with these farmers, the Farmer’s Market, and the San Mateo County Farm Bureau.”

The tour starts in Half Moon Bay and travels to farms where participants will get a guided tour from Erin Tormey, founder of the Coastside Farmers’ Market at Cetrella and from Tim Frahm, director of conservation and water quality for the San Mateo County Farm Bureau.  The first stop will be at Daylight Farms in Half Moon Bay to hear from Farmer John Muller about how he is adding variety to what used to be a strictly flower growing operation.