NOTE: The deadline for this appears to have already passed.

Senate Bill 1295 by Senator Denise Moreno Ducheny (San Diego) would eliminate the Coastal Commission’s ability to appeal development permits granted by local governments up and down the coast.  Please write or fax Senator Darrell Steinberg, Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.  Tell him you oppose SB 1295, and send a copy to Senator Ducheny.

What’s Happening

Senator Ducheny’s bill would eliminate the ability of the Coastal Commission to appeal coastal development permits granted by local governments.  While members of the public can also appeal these permits, citizens and non-profit organizations do not always have the resources or ability to monitor every single one of the hundreds of local permits up and down the coast and appeal the significant ones within a very short ten-day time frame.

Why this is Important

The California Coastal Act provides for oversight by the Coastal Commission over development proposals along the coast.  While the primary responsibility for reviewing projects lies with local governments, the Coastal Commission acts as an appeal body for projects that could adversely affect sensitive coastal habitats, scenic resources, water quality, or public access. The staff of the Coastal Commission receives notice of all local projects, and under the present law, can appeal them by having two Commissioners sign on to an appeal. Once appealed, the public has the opportunity to address issues of concern to them.  If the Commission’s ability to appeal projects is eliminated, many will fall through the cracks, and our coast could be seriously affected by inappropriate or harmful development.

What you can do

Please write or fax Senator Steinberg and send a copy to Senator Ducheny.  We recommend faxing as all letters must be received by March 18th and faxes have more impact than e-mails.  Please let us know that you have written [email protected]

Just to let y’all know, I am off like a herd of turtles and working through the requisite rigamarole to get the 2008 Season of the Market up and running.  We are heading toward opening in Shoreline Station in Half Moon Bay on Saturday,  May 3rd, and opening day on Wednesday, May 7th at Rockaway Beach in Pacifica.  I am good to go in Pacifica, but have one more go-round before the Half Moon Bay planning commission once again on March 27th, and if any of you are so inclined to come to the meeting or drop an email of support to [email protected] why that would be swell -

Good news for the impatient and impertinent: 

If you just can’t wait ‘till May, there will be a mini-version of the Coastside Farmers’ Market on Monday March 31st at the I.D.E.S. Hall in Half Moon Bay from 5 to 7:00.  This mini-market serves as the opening act for an evening with one of my personal heroes, the bold and remarkable Ann Cooper.  I’ve been lucky to be working with a great group of community members from the HEAL Project, Cunha Community Schools, Seton Coastside, Coastside Family Medical Center, CUSD Food and Nutrition Programs, and we are thrilled to present an evening with this Renegade Chef and Agent of Change, and author of "Lunch Lessons". 

We’re looking for a few Coastside nonprofits who are interested in some free advertising on Coastsider, so we test out our new advertising systems.  Email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you’re interested in participating.  To keep the overhead low, organizations that are able to produce their own Web ads will get priority.  If you’re selected, we’ll send you specifications.

Reece Computer Systems in Half Moon Bay is offering free computer classes taught Terri Reece. Reece has many years of teaching experience in addition to her years as an executive, and explains concepts in a way that makes it easy for students of any level to quickly grasp and understand computing.
The two hour sessions will run from 6:30-8:30pm beginning on April 2, and will continue for 6 weeks through May 7, 2008. The curriculum will introduce students to the "guts" of the computer, the operating system, and the most popular Office 2007 applications. Students may take the entire session or individual classes, giving them the flexibility to pick and choose classes according to their individual time constraints and interests.  Seats are limited, so please contact Reece and reserve a spot ahead of time.  You can reach them at (650) 726-7155 or email: [email protected]

    4/2:  Introduction to the Personal Computer
    4/9:  Introduction to Windows Vista and what’s new from XP Pro
    4/16:  Introduction to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook 2007
    4/23:  Introduction to Microsoft Word 2007
    4/30:  Introduction to Microsoft Excel 2007
    5/7:  Introduction Microsoft PowerPoint 2007

I know that sometimes Coastsider can be earnest enough to gag a Smurf. Take the ownership of public records, for example.

I’ve been wrestling with MCTV over the right to publish newsworthy clips from their cablecasts for a couple of years. Through property taxes and cable fees, you and I pay for their palatial offices in Comcast’s El Granada equipment closet, executive director’s

[Correction: $60,970] annual salary for 25 hours of work a week [PDF of MCTV’s 2005 IRS filing], token payments for their dedicated camera crew, equipment, and even the actual, physical videotapes they use to record the public meetings of our elected bodies.

But MCTV will tell you that they own the contents of those tapes and will not allow anyone to redistribute them. This would be a shocking theft of public property if MCTV’s crime weren’t so penny ante—like stealing pencils from the library.

Last week, Supervisor Rich Gordon weighed in on the controversy [PDF] [Click here for a PDF of MCTV’s county charter] I’ve been bugging him about it for a while, so I only have myself to blame. Sensing that he was unprepared to declare all the recordings to be public property, I asked that the county at least assert its ownership of the tapes it paid for directly—those of Midcoast Community Council meetings.  However, I was extremely disappointed that Supervisor Gordon declined. He was willing to say that boards could negotiate ownership with MCTV—but they have every reason not to.

As I told Supervisor Gordon, MCTV’s policy panders to the worst instincts of our elected officials by promising to bury their newsworthy and controversial acts in hours of tedium.  Darin Boville looked into how the rest of the county handles this, and learned that no San Mateo city that streams their meetings allows a private party to own its copyrights. MCTV’s policy is so weirdly at odds with their mission and the whole point of taping public meetings that you have to wonder about their motives. Fortunately, the Montara Water and Sanitary District and the Coastside Fire Protection District are more committed to openness than MCTV gives them credit for.

What does all this mean? If you want a copy of last week’s Midcoast Community Council meeting, you can pay MCTV $50, roughly four times what you’d pay for a copy of "Citizen Kane".

MCTV’s executive director Constance Malach has made a lot of noise about MCTV’s nonprofit status, continually referring to Coastsider and Montara Fog "commercial" sites. This is a red herring, because (1) MCTV makes more money from its commercial activities than Coastsider and Montara Fog combined, and (2) MCTV has not answered questions about whether it would permit noncommercial sites to redistribute these public meetings.

MCTV is a private organization—in all senses of the word. Their board is

[CORRECTION: elected by a small number of members], and their meetings take place behind closed doors. MCTV has not answered my questions about what material they will accept for cablecast, how they are organized, the names of their directors, or even their price for DVD’s. 

I also asked MCTV whether it would cablecast Coastside board meetings that were created by the boards themselves. I received the following reply from Ms. Malach.

MCTV will not accept public meeting videos from third parties for regularly scheduled meetings of local agencies.  There are a large number of reasons for this that we can review with you at an appropriate time in the future.  We are aware of the sentence in the Gordon letter that you have referred to.  Upon seeing the letter, we discussed the matter with the County and we believe they now better understand the rationale behind our policy.  Our understanding is that Supervisor Gordon’s letter was not intended to ask us to change our policy, and we are not changing it.

I asked Ms. Malach to set a time, as she promised, when she could explain her reasoning. She replied, "You have my answer." MCTV is stonewalling, because they are not accountable to the public.

I’ve tried reasoning with MCTV. I’ve tried taking my concerns to the boards themselves. And I’ve tried to talking to the Board of Supervisors. I’m convinced that the only solution is the reform of MCTV itself, but it may not be worth the trouble. More on that later.

Committee for Green Foothills hired Santa Clara county resident Cynthia D’Agosta to lead the organization.  Ms. D’Agosta will take the reins on May 1, overseeing its programs and fundraising as its new Executive Director.  The Committee for Green Foothills, headquartered in Palo Alto, works for open space and natural resources protection throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

A native Californian, Cynthia’s community involvement and work experiences cover a wide range of leadership and team work on open space planning and natural resource protection.  After receiving her Masters in Landscape Architecture (MLA), from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and a BS in Science and Fine Arts, from UC Santa Cruz, Cynthia jumped right into the work of protecting the environment.   

She has spent the last 8 years working as the first Executive Director of a new local government agency, the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority.  Prior to returning to the Bay Area in 2000 for this position, Cynthia worked in Southern California on river restoration issues and park and open space planning for the County of Los Angeles and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, a JPA of the Santa Monica Mountains State Conservancy. She is also a visual artist who uses landscapes as her inspiration and often her medium.

The Half Moon Bay Library will be presenting their monthly Family Movie Night this Friday, March 21st at 7:00pm.

This month’s feature is Snow Buddies, an adventure with Disney’s talking pups.  They make new friends and compete in an Alaskan dog sled race.  As always there’ll be popcorn from our popcorn wagon and fruit juice.

Join us for our Sanctuary Visitor Center Open House Celebration on Saturday, March 22nd from 1 pm – 4 pm.  Short of a three hour boat trip, this is as up close and personal as you may get to the marine life of the Farallones.

Discover why the sanctuary is famous for the "Big Three" (1) giant blue whales (2) white sharks and (3) the largest seabird rookery in the contiguous United States. Enjoy the Habitat Room featuring living marine life including sand crabs, monkeyface eels and more!

As a rare bonus, the historic Tide Station will be open for you to participate in a special lab featuring marine life eggs. Celebrate with the designers, educators, sanctuary staff and volunteers who have helped make the Sanctuary Visitor Center renovation a success.

For directions to Crissy Field Beach and the Sanctuary Visitor Center:
http://www.farallones.org/about_us/directions.php

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bill McKibben is one of my favorite writers. "The End of Nature" is still an important book on global warming, even though it was written 20 years ago. "The Age of Missing Information" changed the way I think about TV. And you’d be surprised just how much I think about TV. His latest book, "Deep Economy", emphasizes moving beyond growth and focusing on local and regional self-reliance, something that might have lessons for the future of the Coastside.

Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) opens its 15th Annual Wallace Stegner Lecture Series with Bill McKibben. McKibben, a former staff writer for The New Yorker, writes about global warming, alternative energy and the risks associated with human genetic engineering.

McKibben’s new book "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future", makes the compelling case for moving beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursuing prosperity in a more local direction. Our purchases need not be at odds with the things we truly value, McKibben argues, and the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.
 
Bill McKibben’s lecture will be held at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on March 20 at 8:00 p.m., and will be followed by a question-and-answer session and book-signing reception.
            
For more information on the Wallace Stegner Lecture Series or to purchase a subscription, please contact POST at (650) 854-7696. Single tickets for Bill McKibben, N. Scott Momaday and Kaiulani Lee are $22 and can be ordered through the box office at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts at (650) 903-6000.