Comments by Barry Parr
July 04, 2006
Messrs Dunham and Muteff have a different definition of "moderate" that I do. To be a moderate, you have to treat both sides of an issue as a sincere disagreement. I see a polarization of the community by calling the oppositon NIMBY's and "extremists", but I see no willingness to address their arguments as if they were being made by people of good will who differ about how to build a community. I see lots of support for new development, more infrastructure, and rezoning. I see no support for the…
July 02, 2006
Steve writes: It throws into question just how serving of San Mateo County the Times is; it might be they’re stuck in an economic spiral that’s pushing local reporters to prepare news stories that are easily placed in ANG’s other Bay Area county papers, thus rendering it a de facto Bay Area paper. The business model may not actually be much different from, say, the Mercury News, that publishes a daily Peninsula Edition. That's not so much a forced economy as it is a strategy of ANG's owner,…
June 24, 2006
In this case "the proper permits" means "no permits".
If the land's owners get what they are asking for, this plot of land will only be farmable for perhaps one more season. Then it will be covered with concrete and asphalt.
This is not about the right to farm. This is about whether farming is being used as a pretext to literally bury environmentally-sensitive land as a prelude to building. That's paying lip service to agriculture.
Farmer Iacopi appears to be growing fig leaves.
June 21, 2006
Mary: I don't know the law, but it seems reasonable to me to require a CDP to begin farming land that hasn't been farmed in more than ten years, and probably much longer. Long enough ago that even the land's owner and lessee cannot say when it happened last. If you favor open space on the Coastside, you have to favor making it easy for farmers to earn a living from their land. But this is not some crazy eco-twit hardship being imposed on a struggling farmer. The B&G Club doesn't even consider agriculture…
June 20, 2006
Trader Joe's would be preferable to just about any other chain store. My preference would be for a movie theater for a bunch of reasons. It may be the only site big enough that's already covered with asphalt. It's also close enough to downtown to have some positive effects there.
June 19, 2006
I'm on the fence on this one. I love Trader Joe's, but for every chain store we add to the community, we lose a little bit of what makes us unique.
Take a look at downtown Burlingame or Palo Alto. The chain stores threaten to make them open-air versions of Hillsdale Mall. Lots of tasty rents and sales taxes, but less sense of community with every passing year.
June 23, 2006
The state's statistics are based on certificates of occupancy. I checked with Jack Liebster when I wrote the story and he confirmed that the number was accurate. So, yes, a house could be permitted in one year and occupied in later. It is also my understanding that Wavecrest has accumulated the ability to build a lot of houses under measure A (Do I have the correct measure?) that it has not yet exercised for obvious reasons. I don't know if those are transferrable. When (if?) Wavecrest gets built,…
June 23, 2006
Steve: I'm talking about new home construction, not home sales. Mike & Ray: I mentioned Lesley Gardens as the reason for the growth surge in my story. I believe that certain parts of the city (downtown?) are exempt from the 1% limit as well. Clearly, Lesley Gardens doesn't place as much burden on the Coastside as a subdivision, especially in terms of cars or land use. But, as you can see from its parking lot, it is not impact-free. I have always maintained that affordable housing should be allocated…
June 23, 2006
Half Moon Bay grew at 2.6% in 2004, mainly due to exceptions made by the city. We don't know what it was in 2005.
https://coastsider.com/comments/678_0_1_0_C/
June 19, 2006
I did get a request from Ken to replace one comment with another a couple of hours after the first one had been posted. I didn't read either the new or the old comment too closely, so I don't know what the differences were. Generally, I've got better things to do than edit everyone's posts, so lets not make this a habit. Sounds like Ken thought better what he wrote, which was a weak reference to "good ol' Charlie Brown". Good for him. The goal here is enlightening discussion, not scoring points.…
June 18, 2006
I think the definitive piece so far on problems with the bypass is Mike Ferreira's three-part piece on Coastsider.
CCF has Coastsider's permission to reprint that piece (with credit) on their site in the interest of furthering their educational mission. I'm sure Mike won't object.
June 14, 2006
(a) It's intended for a city park, not for open space, and (b) POST buys land for resale, not to hold it.
June 15, 2006
Do you have any comments on the content of the policy itself?
June 19, 2006
Mark knows a lot about coastal issues and the Coastal Commission in particular. He's also got a great fund of knowledge about what has worked and not worked in other coastal communities. I'd like to see more contributions from him on the site. I think we'd all learn something.
June 18, 2006
Terry: I'm surprised you've taken it upon yourself (a) define my guest list and (b) challenge my guests as to whether they meet your standards. But it speaks volumes about your state of mind when you say that Coastsider is for: "folk that ... want to help the folk that live on the coast to develop this resource for us and visitors." ...but you don't include those who want to help us *preserve* this "resource". But enough about you, let's talk about me. Coastsider is for anyone who cares enough about…
June 15, 2006
We don't need "comprehensive community based planning" to tell us we need school buses.
June 15, 2006
It's likely the bypass will exacerbate the already godawful weekend traffic problem at Surfers beach, cutting the Coastside in half. I suppose that would benefit the merchants in Linda Mar, but it's no solution to weekend traffic. Also, keep in mind that the tunnel is going to greatly improve tourist access to the Coastside on the weekend. It's not clear to me how the bypass would reduce traffic accidents. By mixing through-traffic with residential areas along the bypass, I think you stand a pretty…
June 15, 2006
Actually, the only reason the bypass is even on the table is because of the Slide crisis, which has now dwindled to an hour or so of commute time in the morning. And I believe that if the school board committed itself to offering reliable busing for the school year beginning in September, as well as made permanent its temporary schedule changes, the morning commute problem would be significantly better in the fall, especially after the Slide is repaired.
June 14, 2006
Ray:
If someone criticizes your idea as being illegal, unaffordable, offensive to the senses and unlikely to solve the problem, the correct response is to defend your idea. Not to say, "Can you do any better?"
There is also already one proposal for solving the traffic problem on the table that has been ignored by CCF: school busing. There are others, but that's not the point.
June 14, 2006
I should have been more explicit. What I meant to say was that it's arguable that the bypass will improve commute traffic, rather than simply moving the bottleneck.
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