This Wednesday at 7:30pm, the MCC and the League of Women Voters are hosting a Candidate Forum, at Seton Coastside in Moss Beach.  All 5 candidates for the Board of Supervisors 3rd district are expected to attend. 

There won’t be an MCC meeting, it will be all candidates, all the time.  Audience members will have a chance to submit short written questions at the beginning of the meeting.  One of these candidates will be our next supervisor, and could serve for as many as twelve years, so this will be an important event.

Tell your friends, and come if you can.

Cliff Notes: SMC requests, and receives, stimulus money for Half Moon Bay, Menlo Park, Pacifica and other parts of San Mateo County.

The unincorporated MidCoast gets none.

Let’s establish some context. Those of us on the Midcoast already know:

Our roads are in a sorry state (Ocean Blvd, what was once the main thoroughfare for Seal Cove in Moss Beach, for example is slipping into the sea and San Mateo County tries to asses residents to pay for its replacement). Surface streets, despite being in residential neighborhoods with home values north of $1M, wouldn’t look out of place in a war zone or third world country.

Our stretch of Highway 1 is sorely overtaxed with increasing resident and visitor-serving traffic.

Our utilities are badly in need of being updated including running unsightly and unreliable power lines underground since we lose power every winter when trees fall onto power lines (and residents lose appliances to brown outs and surges).

Public school buses stopped picking up our kids years ago due to lack of funding and all the additional cars on the road contribute to nightmarish commuter traffic.

We have no community center.

Bottom line: the Midcoast needs infrastructure funding and we need it yesterday.

Against this backdrop, what does SMC do?

They apply for no Federal Stimulus money for Moss Beach (and other Midcoast communities), while applying for, and receiving, significant funding for Half Moon Bay, Menlo Park, Pacifica and others.

See for yourselves: 

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx

Pacific Coast Dream Machines Show, the Coastside’s annual airshow/festival of internal combustion takes place on Sunday, April 25 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Half Moon Bay Airport. The show benefits the Coastside Adult Day Health Center. 

Headline attractions include motocross demos; a B-25 Bomber from World War II, a highly modified P-51 Mustang "Strega"—8-time class champion at the Reno Air Races;  "Death Stalker"—the world’s only M-551 Sheridan Tank from Operation Desert Storm; a special "Green Machines" display of advanced technology/alternative fuel vehicles; mad scientist Jack Schroll’s "El Diablo"—a spectacularly menacing jet-powered flame effects device designed for Burning Man Festival; the Blastolene Brothers extreme, mega-modified machines; ace aerobatics pilot Eddie Andreini doing fly-overs in his Stearman bi-plane and Russian fighter; Wild Bill’s amphibious "watercar"; the KISS Tribute Harley paying homage to the icons of rock & roll; the "Aerocar", a Jetson’s inspired space-age car that actually flies; and "World Record Wonderland" featuring several current world land speed record holders including the lightning fast, super sleek "Ack Attack" and "BuddFab" motorcycle streamliners.

Spectator admission is $20 for adults, $10 for age 11-17 and 65+, and free for kids age 10 and under. Tickets are available at the gate only.

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, more than 100 volunteers, group leaders, and activity coordinators will assemble at 10 am, Saturday, April 24 to clean up the the Kelly Avenue/Street corridor from Francis State Beach all the way to Main Street.

“The original idea was to just gather a few friends together and clean up garbage on Kelly Street,” says organizer Joe Fullerton, a resident of the Kelly Avenue neighborhood. “It’s evolved into a community effort to honor and protect our most precious resources, not just the ocean and open space but also our people.”

Starting at the beach, the clean-up brigade will move up Kelly to the downtown area and finish with a celebration and closing ceremony at Mac Dutra Park. Children can take part in special activities like Litter Bingo and Trash to Treasure, and all volunteers will receive reusable shopping bags stuffed with goodies.

Several downtown area businesses, including La Di Da Cafe, the Art Attic, San Benito House, and Chez Shea, are supporting the effort by offering special discounts to the volunteer brigade. Other sponsors and donors include Allied Waste Management, Save Our Shores, Sam’s Chowder House, and the City of Half Moon Bay.

Besides picking up garbage, volunteers can choose to make a pledge to do something small to help the community over the next year. The group hopes to collect signatures and use this event as a launching point for future collaborative community action.

Interested volunteers can join the party at 10am at Francis State Beach. For more details, see the event Facebook page, http://bit.ly/hmb-kellyst.

Earth Day Activities at Pacifica Gardens
Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day at Pacifica Gardens!

*Composting Demonstrations – Learn how to convert your yard waste and kitchen scraps into garden fertilizer.

*Vermiculture Demonstrations – Learn how to compost using worms nable agriculture and techniques for growing your own food locally

*Sunflower Planting – Come help plant and learn the connection between native bees, and a sustainable food source.

Come tour Pacifica Gardens to see how the project is teaching sustainable agriculture and techniques for growing your own food locally.
April 24, 2010 at Pacifica Gardens
830 Rosita Road, Pacifica, CA (behind the Linda Mar Education Center)
9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
For more info please contact Loretta O’Brien at (650) 296-9502, or visit www.pacifica-gardens.org

With breeding season underway, NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary urges coastal visitors, whether boaters and paddlers or small aircraft pilots, to avoid disturbing nesting seabirds. In Spring, seabirds often favor the protection of rugged coastal cliffs and offshore islands, and will form dense, noisy breeding colonies in areas such as Devil’s Slide Rock,  Pt. Reyes and the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco, and the Farallon Islands.

Although seabirds spend most of their time at sea, they must come to land to rest, nest and rear their chicks. Colonies of several hundred thousand may form adjacent to fish-rich ocean waters that also attract fishermen, boaters, pilots, birdwatchers and other wildlife enthusiasts.  Seabirds will neglect their young if disturbed repeatedly, and may abandon a colony altogether.

“Seabirds are indicators of change in ocean conditions – an early warning system for scientists and managers of fisheries and marine protected areas,” said Maria Brown, sanctuary superintendent. “Healthy colonies are the best baseline for detecting the type and severity of changes that occur.”

Coastal users can also download maps of sensitive areas and overflight information at http://farallones.noaa.gov/eco/seabird/welcome.html.

Coastside nonprofits are holding a Townhall to address the issues of teens and alcohol and bring teens and adults together to create solutions.  Saturday, May 1 from noon to 2pm at the Ted Adcock Center, 535 Kelly, Half Moon Bay.

Youth and adult members of the Coastside Prevention Partnership will host a Town Hall Festival.  There will be featured guest speakers and a discussion about the concern of youth access to alcohol in the Coastside Community with an emphasis on prevention. Also included in the event are community resources, local art and live entertainment, food, refreshments, and prizes.

Participating organizations include the Coastside Collaborative, El Centro de Libertad, San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, San Mateo County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, Cabrillo Unified School District, Kaiser Permanente, Seton Coastside, Local Artists from the Heart of Chaos, Entertainers, Youth Leaders, Community Members, and Youth Leadership Institute.

The Queen Of Classic Jazz & Blues in the authentic style of the 1940’s and 1950’s celebrates a new album “Miss Smith To You.”

The Skillet Lickers are bona fide jazz players, proffering chops and Basie-esque arrangements …Then there’s Smith, whose sultry vocals readily betray the influence of Billie Holiday, Little Esther and Dinah Washington while sounding slavish to none.” – Orange County Weekly The saucy vocalist and her eight-piece crew actually know the difference between jump music and bland R&B in corny suits. They have been a working unit since 1989 and sound as tight as the legendary musicians they choose.

Reservations: [email protected]
April 25, 2010 – 4:30, $30
Douglas Beach House on Miramar Beach
307 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
650 726-4143, www.bachddsoc.org

The book that June Morrall was completing at the time of her death,  Moss Beach, is now available. June Morrall explored the history of the community with more than 200 vintage photographs. From the press release:

The developers of the Ocean Shore Railroad envisioned Moss Beach as one of a string of resorts along the San Mateo County coastline. The railroad did not endure but the automobile era brought prosperity to the secluded area, which hummed with activity during Prohibition and became a strategic and controlled location during World War II. Early settler Jurgen Wienke, who built the original Moss Beach Hotel in the 1880s, would be amazed at how this little town has evolved. Abundantly endowed with natural beauty, the Moss Beach of yesterday can still be discovered today.

The book is available at Coastside bookstores.