You’re invited to open house aboard National Marine Sanctuary Research Vessel "Fulmar" at Pillar Point Harbor’s 75th anniversary celebration, Saturday, Aug 16 from 10 am to Noon

Visit with NOAA Captain Dave Minard and staff from Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to learn about research that is conducted in the North-Central California national marine sanctuaries: Gulf of the Farallones, Monterey Bay, and Cordell Bank. Step aboard and see various kinds of navigation and other equipment used in at-sea operations to study our oceans, and more effectively manage and conserve our marine resources.

Pillar Point Harbor is at the end of Capistrano Road, just north of Half Moon Bay.

Trumpet Virtuoso/Singer/Comedian/Actor—Jack Sheldon’s importance to the entertainment industry has been a constant throughout his career spanning from the 1940s to the present ... and from bebop to voice-overs. He is living proof that jazz and showbiz do mix. Jack Sheldon’s mark on the world of entertainment is indelible.  Along with Lester Young in the 30s, Dizzy Gillespie in the 40s, and Zoot Simms in the 50s, Jack Sheldon is one of the Original Lions of the West Coast Sound.
 
Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society
307 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
$35.  Tickets at the door. Reservations for members.
Doors Open at 3 PM, Music from 4:30 to 7:30 PM, with intermission.

Who says there’s no nightlife in Montara? The will be an open mike at Caffe Lucca, in the heart of Montara’s entertainment district, this Friday night from 7 to 9:30pm.  In August, there will be Friday open mikes at Caffe Lucca on August 1, 15, and 29

Caffe Lucca
Hwy 1 @ 8th St.
Montara
728-5229

Enrollment in the Cabrillo Unified School District (CUSD) may be about to increase for the first time in a decade if recent demographic trends continue, and the school population is about to become majority Hispanic.

Is the district, or the community, ready for these changes?

The total enrollment of CUSD grew at a fairly rapid pace until it peaked around 1997-98. It has been declining steadily ever since.

In 1996, the district forecast its enrollment of 3,900 would grow to 5,200 in 2008, and it planned for an aggressive expansion in its facilities. Today, the actual enrollment is 3,300. The steady fall in enrollment has taken a good deal of facilities pressure off the district.

The reasons behind the fall in enrollment are a subject of some debate, with flight to private schools and demographic changes being the most popular explanations.

But, the overall enrollment numbers don’t tell the whole story.

White enrollment has dropped rapidly since its 1996-97 peak. Meanwhile, Hispanic enrollment has grown steadily. Other subgroups have held relatively steady, at least as a group.

In the last 15 years, district white enrollment has dropped from 73% to 46% of the student population, while Hispanic enrollment has grown from 23% to 45%.

Countywide, where black and Asian students are a larger share of enrollments, the trends are generally similar, but all the trends are much less pronounced.

If we assume that the total enrollment will continue its current trend, we’d expect the district’s enrollment to continue to decline.

But if we project our three subgroups independently, we see a very different picture. White enrollment continues to decline, but the Hispanic enrollment is about to add more students than white enrollment is losing, reversing the decline in the very near future. Total enrollment may have bottomed out, having dropped by only seven students in 2008.

Hispanic enrollment is likely to overtake white enrollment by this fall, and it will be more than half of district enrollment in two years.

This analysis doesn’t consider new changes in demographic trends, the bursting housing bubble, changes in local employment patterns, and the state of the economy generally. But the basic trends have been consistent for a decade now.

While the district generally seems to be well-intentioned, there is little indication they are equipped for a dramatic shift in their student population. There have been no Hispanic members (or even candidates) on the district’s board in recent memory.

There are some encouraging signs, though. The new El Granada and high school principals have strong bilingual experience, and there have been impressive performance gains among El Granada Elementary’s Hispanic students. We’ll look at this in a future article.

In today’s County Times, Julia Scott quotes developer Chop Keenan say that his payments to Half Moon Bay’s lobbyists were intended to support lobbying for AB1991. This is consistent with his statements to the Review, but not those to Capitol Weekly on Friday.

If he was paying for consulting, as California Strategies (and later Keenan) insists, he says he received a phone call every couple of weeks for his $50,000.

"I think it’s pretty clear that AB1991 is in both of our interests, so I don’t know where the conflict is. It’s not like the city or I am telling them how to do their job. Every couple weeks somebody calls (from the firm) and tells me what’s going on," said Keenan, who said he decided to support the city’s efforts at an early meeting with the city manager and representatives of California Strategies at the law offices of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, the city’s legal team.

"It was very informal and I decided it was in my self-interest to put some horsepower behind California Strategies’ efforts," he said.

That’s a juicy new detail: the arrangement was worked out at a meeting at the offices of the city’s attorneys between California Strategies, city manager Marcia Raines, and Keenan.

Half Moon Bay Councilmember John Muller said none of his colleagues on the council knew of Keenan’s payments prior to Tuesday’s meeting, but that he was neither surprised nor troubled by them.

"It wasn’t like he was opposing us in the settlement agreement. We agreed he would support us in passing AB1991. That’s all in the agreement. It says he’s going to help us pass the legislation," Muller said.

Capitol Weekly, Aug 8:

Keenan confirmed Kinney’s version of his deal with California Strategies. He contracted for two and a half months of consulting services at $20,000 a month, for a total payment of $50,000. The deal expired on July 1. Lobbyist filings on the Secretary of State’s website disclose no lobbying payments from Keenan to California Strategies.

"It’s in the city’s interest to get AB 1991 passed," Keenan said. "It’s also in my interests. We have a community of interest. The way Jason characterized it is exactly right." When asked why he needed consulting services, Keenan said, "I’m just really not clear on how thing works up there. I felt I needed guidance."

HMB Review, Aug 8, 12:54 PM PDT

In interviews on Wednesday and Thursday, Keenan did not distinguish between the city’s lobbying contract and his consulting contract with California Strategies, saying that he and the city "collectively" hired the firm.

According to Keenan, he had no control over the firm’s activities. He said he would occasionally receive feedback on the legislative proceedings in Sacramento.

From the Half Moon Bay Review, Aug 6:

Keenan confirmed Wednesday that he has been paying $20,000 to help get AB 1991 passed, along with providing attorneys to help draft AB 1991.

"We helped pay the city’s lobbying bill," Keenan said. "Also AB 1991 involves some technical land-use issues so we gave them guidance on that."

From Capitol Weekly, Aug 8:

[California Strategies’ Jason] Kinney said it was inaccurate to say that Keenan was paying the city’s lobbying bills.  He also said that both sides were were aware of the lobbying and consulting operations surrounding the issue.

"I understand the confusion, because the early media report mischaracterized the nature of these separate agreements," Kinney said.

I’m willing to bet that Chop Keenan knows exactly what he’s paying for. I’m also willing to bet California Strategies knows exactly who’s paying them to do what.

We’re working on our own story about this situation, but in the meantime, read the story at Capitol Weekly and the one at the Half Moon Bay Review.  We’ll post a link to the County Times story when it appears.

At Tuesday’s city council meeting, after questioning by council member Jim Grady, it was revealed that Half Moon Bay’s lobbyist in its efforts to get AB1991 passed was also being paid by developer Charles "Chop" Keenan. This revelation has damaged the city’s chances of getting any sort of relief from the state toward the $18 million settlement it has agreed to pay Keenan.

The city council authorized city manager Marcia Raines to pay California Strategies up $100,000 to lobby for the passage of the bill that would ease its settlement with Keenan in the Beachwood lawsuit.  AB1991 was intended to remove environmental and other regulatory restrictions that were keeping Keenan from developing the parcel. Raines agreed to pay Capital Strategies $20,000 a month beginning in mid-April.

What the city council apparently didn’t know until Tuesday night was that Keenan was also paying California Strategies $20,000 a month, reports the Capitol Weekly:

This allegation drew a sharp rebuke from [State Senator Leland] Yee. While Yee said "you could paint a pretty picture" about how the city and Keenan are now working together to pass a bill that will work in both of their interest, he was troubled that California Strategies lobbyist Rusty Areias met with him in May and June without disclosing they were also being paid by Keenan.

"I was shocked and dismayed that something like that would have happened," Yee said. "At the very least, you would think that California Strategies would reveal their potential conflict of interests."

Yee also noted that until the bill took its final form, it wasn’t clear that the city’s and Keenan’s interests were identical. California Strategies says it wasn’t being paid by Keenan to lobby:

California Strategies, he said, maintains separate consulting and lobbying businesses. Areias and other lobbyists have been working to ensure the passage of AB 1991. Meanwhile, the settlement agreement with the city required Keenan to work to make sure the settlement is successful. His development company signed a separate consulting agreement with consulting side of California Strategies. Kinney said they talked to Keenan about the "legal principles" of the agreement and what "would pass policy muster."

This mess further clouds the future of AB1991, which now sits in the Senate Rules Committee, with the legislative clock running out. According to Capitol Weekly, Yee said the bill will likely have to be amended in order to get out of the Senate.

And the city’s bill is unlikely to go any anywhere without the support of the Half Moon Bay’s senator, Leland Yee.

Did you ever wish for a change of scene and scenery, get what you wished for, and then wished you’d just stayed home and enjoyed your own back 40? Well, if you are in the mood for a little change of pace without having to charge your pacemaker, then you might want to consider dropping by your neighborhood Farmer’s Market this week and make a plan to can.  

August Marks a high point in the season, as our local farmer’s fields come into a full lush flush of abundance, the peaches get even more perfect, the fruit hangs heavy on the vine. Most of the time I get all hung up on the instant and total gratification that is found in making pies right about now, but this year. I am regressing even further into my inner Betty, and getting out the canning jars.  

I suspect that my Pal Mr D. "the Voice of Reason" (from a south coast farm which shall go un-named) might be right, and that the effect of escalating fuel prices and the attendant rise in the cost of everything is going to have all of us talking like our grandparents did about the depression in about three more weeks, if we aren’t already doing something quite similar already.  So, in a effort to prepare for evermore expensive food, and to make my pantry look really pretty ( and to deserve to own the 40 or so vintage blue mason jars with ceramic lids I inherited) I am taking advantage of the abundance of tree fruit and cucumbers and putting up a whole mess of goodness right now.  

Quarry Park is the only community park in unincorporated Midcoast that is operated by Midcoast Park Lands (MPL) a local organization.  MPL is in the process of transferring management of Quarry Park to the county and terminating a lease agreement with the county.

If 39.5-acre Quarry Park were combined with the adjacent 473-acre Wicklow property owned by Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) the Midcoast would have a much larger community park.  In a recent interview Dave Holland, MPL Board Member and County Parks & Recreation Director suggested combining Quarry Park with the Wicklow property to make one huge coastal parkland corridor. With MPL currently in the process of transferring management of Quarry Park to the county it looks like the Midcoast will soon lose a community park rather than gaining a larger community park.  What the Midcoast will soon end up with is another poorly maintained county park.

Keet Nerhan sold Quarry Park to the county in 1995. In Nerhan’s deed agreement with the county he specified that the county would transfer the park to a public entity. Quarry Park and Moss Beach Park are the only community parks on the Midcoast.

At the July 21, 2008 MPL board meeting Fran Pollard moved to rescind the offer to transfer Quarry Park to the county.  Fran suggested delaying the transfer a couple months to give Granada Sanitary District an opportunity to reorganize into a Community Services District that would provide recreation services in addition to current GSD services. 

At the meeting board member Len Erickson explained that one of the fundamental reasons MPL has been pushing for the transfer is that Dave Holland said that the county would not take acquisition of the Wicklow property unless MPL transferred the Quarry Park lease to the county.  Fran responded by saying she spoke with Rich Gordon recently and Rich said the county could take acquisition of the Wicklow property and not Quarry Park.  MPL board members did not support Fran’s motion to rescind the transfer.

More recently the MPL board has decided to focus its energy on working with Dave Holland on developing the El Granada median strips into parks.  The county owns the El Granada median strip property.

If you don’t live in El Granada the overgrown media strips might be slightly less important than a larger park deeded to the county specifically for use as a Midcoast community park. 

MPL meetings are not open to the public.  If they were and agendas were posted community members might have an opportunity to participate in meetings.  This participation might take the form of funding the Quarry Park insurance payments and provide the energy needed to combine lower Wicklow and Quarry Park into one larger community park. 

With the failure of Measure O the county might be willing to concentrate its efforts on the upper area of the Wicklow property and allow the local community to operate the lower area.

The MPL board of directors includes: Jim Blanchard, Dave Holland, Len Erickson, Gael Erickson, Chris Vogel, Sandy Emerson, Fran Pollard, Ron Fenech and Marty Kingshill. 

Sabrina Brennan