You can observe the murres on Devil’s Slide Rock without risking your life on Highway 1. Video cameras are no beaming images of the murres to a monitor at Point Montara Lighthouse Hostel, and to a web page.  You can also visit the project’s home page.

The Chronicle also tells the story of the penguin-like murres, ravaged by human populations and by fishing and wiped off of the rock by a 1986 oil spill. Scientists lured new birds with decoys and mirrors until the population grew from six nesting pairs to 190 last year.

The County Times goes to Duarte’s Tavern, where the olallieberry pie has been declared the best pie in the country by LIFE Magazine. The Duartes have been baking the pies since 1949.

This week, it was auto vandalism (keyed car, broken window), two warrant arrests (including an AWOL soldier), drunkenness in public and behind the wheel, and a burglary. Click "read more" to see the details.

Light Up The Sky Fourth of July promises that, despite its difficulties, it will set off fireworks as planned on Monday, July 4.

The display will be at Pillar Point Harbor at "first darkness" on Monday. Highway 1 will be closed from 7pm to about 10pm. Sunset will be at about 8:30, and twilight ends at about 9.

The organization’s CEO Richard Frustere says that on July 4, it will still be about $5,000 short of the $24,000 it needs to put on the show. The money will be owed to folks who have lent the organization cash and to its suppliers, but Frustere has not identified the local heroes who are financing the difference. Fundraising will continue after July 4. Donations can be made at the organization’s website.

The Review has been investigating Light Up The Sky for a year, and while it hasn’t produced any smoking guns, it has raised a lot of unanswered questions. I’ve also been trying unsuccessfully to get financial statements out of the organization.

Nobody wants fireworks on the Coastside more than I do. Last year, when I found out the organization didn’t have a website, I created one for them. This year, I declined to help until the organization’s finances were more transparent.

This weekend, let’s enjoy the show. Next week, the community needs to resolve the uncertainty, clear up the organization’s debt, and make the Coastside fireworks show an annual certainty.

The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) voted to buy the 676-acre Miramontes Ridge property from Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) as an addition to the District’s Mills Creek Open Space Preserve. Miramontes Ridge is located in the foothills west of Skyline Boulevard and north of Burleigh Murray State Park.

"Miramontes Ridge is important because the property’s roads and trails may provide future opportunities to establish a regional trail connection between the Bay Area Ridge Trail and the Coastal Trail," said Craig Britton, the District’s General Manager in the District’s press release.

Click "read more" to see the press release.

Coastsiders have two opportunities to help clean up our beaches next week

On Tuesday, July 5, from 9am to noon, Save Our Shores is sponsoring cleanups at San Gregorio, Francis, Dunes and Montara State Beaches. For more information, visit www.saveourshores.org, call (831) 462-5660, or email Nell Lyons at [email protected]

On Saturday, July 9, from 10am to noon, Surfrider Foundation San Mateo County host their monthly beach clean up at Surfer’s Beach, El Granada (at the jetty). For more information, call Ed Larenas at (650) 619-4339.

Wear sturdy shoes, work gloves, layered clothing and sunscreen. Bags and supplies will be provided. 

The people who created MCTV, the Coastside’s community TV station, got together to celebrate 20 years of service to the community on Sunday.

Wedged in between foggy days, we had a few hours to enjoy the sunshine and views of Princeton Harbor from the deck of the Harbor House.

CEO Connie Malach paid tribute to the channel’s board members, producers, videographers, editors, staff, and volunteers.  It’s amazing how many people are working really hard to produce this service for the Coastside.

The evening’s program included clips from 20 years of original programming produced for MCTV. Connie said that the station is working to move all those hours of tapes in various formats to a single digital format so they could be made available to the public.

Click on one of the pictures to see Coastsider’s album of photos from the party.

The editorial in the June 14 Review was baffling. I know it’s difficult to do your best writing when there’s no one to edit the editor—I experience that every day.  So, as a public service, I’ve decided to edit the editorial for Review’s editors. Yeah, this is a little late, but it’s important.

If you click on the image below, you’ll get a full-sized version of my edits that will be easier for you to read. But I’ll summarize it in case you don’t want to go to the trouble.  The headline and the conclusion seem to be saying that the city council has limited debate during its meetings.  But if you read between the lines it appears they clarified the rules to make it easier for everyone to say their piece.

The confusion created by this editorial could be the result of muddled thinking, or it could be intentional.

The editorial leaves you with the uneasy impression that the city council is trying to get away with something. In the technology industry, the word for this is "FUD". It stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, and it’s a strategy of "disseminating negative but vague or inaccurate information on a competitor’s product."

Another word for that is propaganda.

Click on the image to read my edits.

San Mateo County is proposing changes to its Local Coastal Plan (LCP) that could dramatically affect the quality of life in the unincorporated Coastside. By making it easier to build on substandard lots and by exempting more houses from its size requirements and annual growth limits, these changes could completely change the texture of our community.

One of the most important issues in the current revisions of the LCP’s for Half Moon Bay and the unincorporated Mid-Coast is how substandard lots are handled.

The size of a standard lot is set by zoning. In most areas of the Coastside, a standard lot is 5,000 square feet, usually 50 feet wide by 100 feet deep. Under long accepted Land Use Planning and Procedures Law, it’s easier to develop a standard lot than a substandard lot because less staff review, public hearings and board consideration is required when lots conform to current regulations.

Thousands of small lots (25 square feet wide) were created on the Coastside when larger units of land were “subdivided” a hundred years ago. Subdivision is not a public process. It’s done by land owners so they can sell their land to multiple buyers.

Subdivision alone creates no right to build anything. That requires a permit and public process. Subdivision does mean that the land owner has submitted a “subdivision map” to the governing land use agency and that the map was approved, allowing the subdivided pieces of land to be individually sold.

Ideally, the land use planned in the subdivision map is consistent with land use plans and zoning. But, over time, these can diverge.

Zoning is the set of physical rules and standards by which a General Plan’s vision is implemented.

Zoning regulates the type and intensity of land use, and should serve public goals by keeping compatible uses together and to separate incompatible uses. Zoning should be orderly, compatible and conducive to the public health, safety and welfare. For example, one might not want to put pork rendering plant next to homes or a rifle range next to a hospital.

For example, Half Moon Bay adjusts the size of a house to keep it in proportion with the site. For a 2,500 square foot lot in a 5,000 square foot zone, the result is an 800 square foot cottage instead of a 1,300 square foot starter house.

Since thousands of lots from the Coastside’s antiquated subdivisions are smaller than the minimum zoning requirement of 5,000 square feet, they are legally “substandard”. This does not mean unusable but rather “usable with care” so as not to harm the public interest by causing undue crowding, traffic congestion, demand for public services, pollution, environmental damage, crime, noise, etc.

Ninety percent of the substandard lots on the Coastside are located in the unincorporated Mid-coast, which is controlled by San Mateo County.

The county now requires only a “Use Permit” to develop on a substandard lot. This means a public hearing to determine if (1) the applicant has made a good-faith attempt to acquire adjacent land so as to make the building site standard and (2) the proposed development would not harm affected property owners or the public interest.

The county doesn’t enforce the good-faith requirement, and assumes no harm in the case of a single house. This ignores the long-term implications of a death by a thousand cuts. However, at least the “Use Permit” process puts the process out in the open, allowing public input and Coastal Commission appeal for egregious abuse of the public interest or precedent-setting cases.

In its proposed changes to its LCP, the county proposes to make it even easier to develop substandard lots. The new LCP would make any substandard lot of 3,500 square feet or greater yet under the Zoning Lot Minimum Requirement of 5,000 square feet considered “buildable, as a matter of right” and only require a “Use Permit” for lots under 3,500 square feet. This would gut the central purpose of zoning and eliminate any possibility of public hearings and Coastal Commission appeals for thousands of future houses affecting current residents.

Moreover, the county is proposing to remove affordable housing and all housing on substandard lots from their annual Growth Control Limits. The county would also exempt development of substandard lots from any meaningful proportionality requirement. These are the very lots where proportionality rules are most needed.

The county’s new approach seems inconsistent with the Coastal Act, which clearly states that affordable housing is subject to the Coastal Act, just like any other development in the Coastal Zone.

Half Moon Bay’s approach to substandard lots is now part of its LCP and has been accepted by the Coastal Commission. Half Moon Bay’s Proportionality Rule has not been challenged in court by anyone, most likely because reasonable use of substandard lots is still allowed.

In contrast, the county is moving toward treating substandard lots as if they were standard. The coastal Commission already rejected this approach in 1998 during the county’s ill-fated Coastal Protection Initiative. It is highly debatable whether Mid-Coast residents would politically support the county’s approach if they knew about it. The time to speak up for an all inclusive Growth Control and Proportionality Policy is now as the next Board of Supervisors’ Public Hearing on the county’s LCP is set to take place in July. Send your written comments to the county Board of Supervisors asking that your comments be made a part of the Official county Record regarding the county’s LCP Update as follows:

President Richard Gordon and Members of the Board of Supervisors Hall of Justice and Records 400 county Center Redwood City, CA 94063

Fax a copy of your comments to George Bergman, Project Planner at Fax: 363-4849 and also to the California Coastal Commission c/o Chris Kern at Fax: (415) 904-5400.

The San Francisco Coastwalk is featured in Sunday’s Chronicle.  Coastwalks are three- to six- day hiking and camping trips along and near the California Coastal Trail. The walks feature insights from local experts, camping and sleeping in interesting locales, and dinners prepared by volunteers.

The San Mateo County summer Coastwalk is coming up August 1 to 6:

San Mateo is a mix of wild beaches, coastal towns, golf courses and marine reserves, with a bird sanctuary and working harbor. We stay in parks, private ranches and Pigeon Point Lighthouse Hostel. We will visit a mushroom farm, see elephant seals at Año Nuevo, check out tide pools, bird watch at Pescadero Marsh, and much more. This is a great family hike averaging 7 miles a day.