Although there has been no formal proposal to build the Foothill Bypass yet, the California Coastal Commission is already making it clear that the environmental challenge may be too great to overcome.

Chris Kern, Coastal Program Manager for the North Central Coast District, has written a strongly-worded letter to Half Moon Bay City Manager Debra Auker, writing in response to an article in the June 6 issue of the County Times. Click the link below for the full text of the letter, but the key paragraph is:

John [sic] Gardner is quoted in the article as stating: “You could route a two-lane bypass through and around those wetlands and then come up with a mitigation plan that would be embraced by the Coastal Commission.”  This is incorrect.  In accordance with the foregoing discussion, we would not support construction of a new roadway through wetlands because that would be prohibited under the Coastal Act and the City’s LCP.

Mike Ferreira says that the $150 million estimate attributed to him in the County Times article is for the four-lane version of the bypass from Young Avenue to Main Street: "Charlie’s estimate of $40 million for the two underpass version is probably low-end-accurate assuming minimal specifications."

I thought I’d take my camera down Highway 1 and into downtown Half Moon Bay and talk to the people running retail businesses here on the coast. I stopped at random and spoke with the owners and managers and asked them a single question: How is business with the Slide closed?

The answers were surprising.

We received press releases from both the Sheriff’s Office and the HMB Fire District about this one.  Be careful out there.

In an effort to heighten public awareness of rip currents at surf beaches, NOAA designates June 4-10 as national Rip Current Awareness Week.

Rip currents are powerful currents of water moving away from shore.  On average, more people die every year from rip currents than from shark attacks, tornadoes or lightning. According to the United States Lifesaving Association, 80 percent of surf beach rescues are attributed to rip currents, and more than 100 people die annually from drowning when they are unable to escape a rip current.

Rip currents can attain speeds as high as 8 feet per second.  This is faster than an Olympic swimmer can sprint!

Rip currents do not pull people under the water- they pull them away from shore.

The Half Moon Bay Fire District joins with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in bringing to the attention of the water-going public the Inaugural National Rip Current Awareness Week. Click for safety tips.

Measure S, the school parcel tax, failed to pass. The measure received 61% of the vote, but 2/3 (67%) was needed to pass. All 31 precincts in the school district have reported.

This is the fifth time the district has failed to pass a parcel tax since 1999.

Polls closed at 8pm tonight.  For local results, including San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and Measure S parcel tax, check San Mateo County’s results. 

For statewide races, including democratic primaries for governor and state senate, check the California Secretary of State’s election results page.

Caltrans is less certain a new traffic light is needed

Caltrans is less certain that a traffic light is needed for commuters turning from northbound Highway 1 onto Highway 92.  Caltrans Deputy District Director for Operations Sean Nozarri presented the results of its traffic study to the Half Moon Bay City Council Tuesday night.  Apparently, the decrease in traffic in the past few weeks has diminished the need for the light.

At the conclusion of the presentation, city council member Jim Grady asked, "Your recommendation is not to turn those lights on?" Nozarri replied "Yes."

For one hour of peak commute time, from 6am to 7am, the light would decrease the wait time for southbound commuters from 31 minutes to about 7 minutes.  From 7am to 8am, the delay would be reduced from 12 minutes to about 8.

Nozarri said that the combination of measures to improve traffic flow and adaptations by commuters have significantly reduced the traffic problems at the intersection.  They said that the light was "Recommended, but not currently critical". If the traffic conditions from early May returned, Caltrans said the light would be "Highly recommended".

Half Moon Bay’s Albertsons supermarket will close in early August.

The Albertsons chain, once the second-largest in the country with 2,500 stores, has been struggling for years.  It was sold this month to a group of companies that included the Supervalu grocery store and CVS drugstore chains.  After Supervalu and CVS cherry-picked the locations they wanted for their stores, the remaining 660 Albertsons stores were to be operated as a separate company.  The company has closed many of these locations nationwide, and our own local Albertsons is among them.

The Half Moon Bay store has 37 employees, according to company representative Quyen Ha. The company is closing 37 of 168 stores in Northern California and Nevada.

At tonight’s Half Moon Bay City Council meeting, Caltrans will present the results of their traffic study of Highway 1 and Highway 92. The purpose of the study was to predict the effect of a traffic light for cars turning right onto Highway 92 from Highway 1 northbound. The city council will discuss the report and "possible direction to city staff". This is the first item on the agenda for a meeting that begins at 7pm.

If you’re a commuter, even if you don’t live in Half Moon Bay, you may want to attend this meeting.

Everyone is expecting a low turnout today, so your vote is even more important than usual.

We stopped by Farallone View Elementary to get some pictures at the poll there.

Cheri Parr

Diana Kalos of Coastside Children’s Programs at Farallone View casts her vote.

Cheri Parr

Diligent poll workers.

Cheri Parr

Measure S supporter Cindy Epps inserts her ballot.

Click the link to see more election day photos.

Monday night, the Big Wave project, which links homes for developmentally disabled adults with commercial office space, took an important step in what looks like a long and difficult path.  The project aims to build on twenty acres of land next to the Half Moon Bay Airport, Pillar Point Marsh, and Pillar Ridge mobile home community [Google map].

Officially, this was a "Pre-application Workshop" that is required by ordinance for all "major developments" in San Mateo County. The intent of such workshops is to gather input from the public early on, before an application is actually submitted, to hear the public’s concerns, so that these concerns may be formally addressed later on during the project review by County staff. The County staff will publish a summary of the comments made at tonight’s meeting and will attempt to provide some sort of response to questions asked

It was billed by David Byers, land-use attorney for the Big Wave project, as the “first time in any sense this project has been unveiled to the community”.

Though this was the first such meeting dedicated to  showcasing Big Wave, the project has been presented before during public meetings of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and of the Half Moon Bay City Council, among others. Its proponents came out in force for the county’s hearings on its Local Coastal Program.

The proposed project would be located on two separate parcels located near the Pillar Ridge Manufactured Home Community, just north of Princeton, off Airport Road. The northern of the two parcels is zoned M-1 (Marine, Light Industrial) and M-1, AO  (Marine, Light Industrial in the Airport Overlay zone). The southern of the two parcels is zoned W (Waterfront Industrial).

Neither zoning designation provides for residential use. The project proposes to include 18 small single-story homes (1200 sq. ft., 2 bedroom, 2 bath) and 18 1-bedroom apartments. According to the applicant, the 18 small homes would be initially sold at cost to members of the developmentally-disabled community. From a planning perspective, the residential portion of the project constitutes a new housing subdivision.
 
The commercial portion of the project includes an office park consisting of four two-story office buildings, and associated parking lots, that were described by the applicant’s architect as having a "box-type, warehouse design."

The warehouse/office space would be sold as condos, where part of the ongoing condo association dues from the "for-profit" office park would help pay the operating expenses of the "non-profit" housing. The goal of the project is for the office park to provide space for businesses that would employ developmentally-disabled persons.

Finally, the project includes a self-storage facility along one side of the office park that would provide additional income.