Wednesday night, MCC in partnership with the League of Women Voters will be hosting Candidate Forums for two elections with significant impact for the Coastside. The events will start at 7:30pm at the regular MCC location, the Fireside Room at Seton Coastside Medical Center in Moss Beach.  The Forum will be broadcast live on MCTV – Cable Channel 27.

Supervisor, San Mateo County - District 3 (Elect 1)
October 13, 7:30pm with replay on 21 October at 7pm
- Don Horsley
- April Vargas

Commissioner, San Mateo County Harbor District (Elect 2)
October 13, 7:30pm with replay on 21 October at 7pm
(after Supervisor Candidates Forum)
- Robert Bernardo
- Sabrina Brennan
- William T. Klear
- James J. Tucker

For further information and links to information on individual candidates, visit the MCC Home Page.

The next concert in our acoustic music series is this Friday, October 15th.  The headlining band is Loganville.  In addition to its classic country sound this band throws in a good measure of swing, rockabilly, and old time rock and roll. Don’t miss the opportunity to clap your hands and tap your toes to some great songs.  Also appearing in short sets for this concert will be Nomi Harper and the duo of Frank Ellis and Steve Keating.

Wine and Dine with us from 6 pm until 7 pm.  Music will begin at 7 pm. Dessert and beverages will be served at intermission.  The tickets are $25 per person and include food, drink, entertainment, and parking.

Space is limited.  Please reserve seats in advance.  For information or to reserve seats phone 650-728-8045 or email [email protected].

Cypress Meadows is located at 343 Cypress Ave. in Moss Beach.

Ah, it’s that time of the year on the coastside, Pumpkin Festival, Parcel Taxes and MWSD rate hikes. If you live in Montara and Moss Beach and you are not on a well, you should have received a notice from Montara Sanitary District dated Sept 10, 2010 with the proposed new maximum rate increase for your drinking water along with a schedule of both the current and proposed fees and charges. If these changes go through families in the water district will be unfairly affected by the proposed changes. I have written the District Board and I appeared at their regularly scheduled meeting this month to try to understand how they decided on the model they proposed but as yet have not been given an adequate explanation. Time is running out for rate payers to protest this change. We have until November 4, 2010 to respond (details at the end of this letter).

Why are the proposed rates unfair to families?

In looking over the information in the notice two things struck me as being inconsistent with the MWSD stated goal to “encourage further water conservation practices”.

First, since water consumption is measured by connection and not by person, it is easy to see how a single person or couple living in a home would have a better advantage with the new rates than a family with children. They would take less baths, less laundries and less flushes by connection, but not necessarily be conserving more water per person. There is no way to tell with the current metering system.

This brings me to my second observation. In changing consumption from a two tier system to a four tier system and discounting lower brackets while penalizing higher brackets on a connection based system may be fair from a raw usage point of view except for the way they choose the brackets. In the old two tier system anything less than 19 HCF was charged one rate while anything over 19 HCF was charged a higher rate. But with the 4 tier system with the two lower brackets each being 7 HCF and the third bracket be 14 HCF, it will again punish families who will now enter the third tier more quickly than under the old system and have to pay a penalty for the excess water consumed.

It would seem to me that the larger bracket (14 HCF) should be Tier 2 where a majority of the rate payers fall and where the median (11 CCF) and average (13 CCF) consumers fall. Or simply make all the tiers 9 HCF which would be closer to the previous system with a small incentive to the middle tier to conserve. I am sure there are other ways to adjust these tiers which would impact all demographics fairly but time does not let me explore those here. 

NOTE: SamTrans buses are a vital part of the Coastside’s infrastructure. This position is a very important one for our community.

The San Mateo County Transit District Board of Directors is seeking applicants to fill the Coastside Public Member seat on its board that will become vacant Dec. 31. 
 
The board sets policy for the District, which is responsible for the countywide SamTrans bus service and paratransit service for people who are not able to ride regular fixed-route service.  The District also operates a network of shuttles that connect rail lines to major employment sites and is involved in the Grand Boulevard Initiative as well as transit-oriented development. 
 
The public member must be a resident of the San Mateo County coastal region.  Public members are appointed to represent the diverse residents of the county and cannot be elected officials or have served as an elected official within the previous 12 months. This seat will be appointed by six members of the SamTrans board – the three members appointed by the Board of Supervisors and the three members appointed by the City Selection Committee.  This appointment will have a four-year term, expiring at the end of 2014.
 
The board consists of nine members: three members who are appointed by the Board of Supervisors, two of whom are members of the Board of Supervisors and one who possesses expertise in the field of transportation; three members appointed by the Cities Selection Committee, who are council members representing the northern, central and southern portions of the county; and three public members, one of whom is a coastside resident.  The Board and its committees meet the second Wednesday of the month at 2 p.m.
 
The deadline for submitting an application is Nov. 8.  The application is available online or by calling 650-508-6242.   

So far, Camille Leung, the project planner for Big Wave, has offered the public 20 days to review the Final Environmental Impact Report and story poles (partial? complete?) up only 10 days prior to the planning commission hearing.

The MCC joins CCAG and The Committe for Green Foothills in calling for a minimum of 60 days for review and public comment, as well as at least one coastside workshop/information session during that time and full and complete story poles for the entire public comment period.

The Planning Commission is expected to hear this item on October 27th.

The MCC’s letter follows below:

October 8, 2010
Planning Commission
County Government Center
455 County Center
2nd Floor, Mail Drop PLN122
Redwood City, CA 94063

Honorable Commissioners,

The Midcoast Community Council (MCC) over the past several weeks has had several communications with the Planning Department Staff regarding the Big Wave Final EIR (FEIR). From these conversations we know the Planning Staff is making continuous efforts to complete, internally review and release the FEIR. It is their stated goal to release this document in time to have the review of the FEIR on the October 27, 2010, Planning Commission agenda and to hold this meeting on the Midcoast.

We support a coastside hearing on this topic, but we believe that…

• Length of the initial Draft EIR and expected greater length of the FEIR (“thousands of pages”)
• Time required for Planning to complete their internal review… are clear factors supporting the need for an appropriate (longer review period).

The MCC, at our September 22, 2010 meeting, voted 5-0 to request that the Supervisors ask the following of the Planning Staff in regard to the Big Wave FEIR:

• Require two months between release of the FEIR document and the planning commission hearing.
• Hold public information session on the FEIR, with specific emphasis on key changes incorporated into the Draft EIR.
• [E]nsure timely installation of story poles representing all structures.
• Keep story poles in place throughout the comment period.

The MCC requests that the Planning Commission provide direction to the planning staff consistent with these requests.

[SIGNED]
Neil Merrilees
Chair, Midcoast Community Council

Cc:
San Mateo County Board of Supervisors
Jim Eggemeyer
Camille Leung

There are more photos after the link, and some are more graphic than these.

Midcoast Community Council Special Meeting

When:  Friday October 8, 2010 10:00 a.m.
Where: Café Classique 107 Sevilla Ave El Granada, CA 94018

Special order of business

1.a.  Review and consider letter asking Planning Commission to extend the FEIR public review period to 60 days.

1.b.  Review and consider letter of support for Resource Conservation District grant

Sorry for the late notice but the deadline for the MCC to comment is imminent.

A pregnant blue whale washed up at Bean Hollow State Beach Saturday, reports the Santa Cruz Sentinel.  The whale was 80 feet long and weighed about 75 tons. The fetus washed up about 50 feet from the mother.

"Because the whale was on its back, we couldn’t tell anything as far as possible cause of death," said Guy Oliver, a research fellow at Long Marine Lab in Santa Cruz. "I’d say it probably died four to five days ago. The fetus was about 50 feet from the carcass, and most likely came out, after it died, from a discharge of gas pressure." [...]

"To do a complete necropsy you would cut into and dissect the whale," [Jim Oswald, communications manager at the Marine Mammal Center] said. "It’s too decomposed and in an inaccessible area to do that. It take a long time to do one of those." The California Academy of the Sciences hopes to start taking samples today if conditions allow, Academy communications manager Andrew Ng said.[...]

"It’s heart is probably the size and weight of a Volkswagen Beetle," Oliver said.

A blue whale hasn’t washed up on Coastside beaches since an 87-foot specimen came ashore in Pescadero in 1979.

Details and photos at the Sentinel’s site.