Comments by Paul Perkovic
November 09, 2007
When does the community get to vote on whether or not the Coastside Fire Protection District (CFPD) should contract with CalFire? Apparently, the former boards of the Point Montara Fire Protection District and the Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District made their decisions to go with CalFire, but rejected the idea of putting the question to a community-wide vote, despite petitions organized by the firefighters. Now that it appears the CFPD board majority will be controlled by those very firefighters…
November 09, 2007
What about properties that do not currently receive water service from Montara Water and Sanitary District (MWSD)? Property owners in the community who are not currently connected to the water system for domestic water service also benefit directly from the availability of a water system for fire protection. Prior to Measure V, those property owners received the fire protection benefit but paid nothing. Instead, the full cost of the water system was borne by just the water customers. Long ago, when…
November 09, 2007
Mr. deBeer, Let's turn next to the Measure V bond. This will require two parts. First we will examine your property tax payments for the Measure V bond and your benefits. In a subsequent comment, we will explore the benefits properties on wells receive from community ownership of the water system. What are your effective bond payments? As an example, if you owned your home prior to August, 2003, before the Montara Water and Sanitary District (MWSD) acquired the water system; and if overall assessed…
November 09, 2007
Mr. deBeer, Let's address your Sewer Service Charge first. A comparison with neighboring areas will require some research, which cannot be done over the weekend. (Granada Sanitary District has a website, but it does not show its sewer service charges; the City of Half Moon Bay also has a website, and the Public Works page mentions Sewer Charges, but there is no link with information.) These are our partner agencies in forming Sewer Authority Mid-Coastside, which handles the actual wastewater treatment…
November 08, 2007
Here are a few more thoughts on this subject: Measure V authorized up to $19,000,000 in bonds to be sold by the Montara Water and Sanitary District. The Board of Directors kept the actual bond issue to $17,500,000, which resulted in an 8% lower tax rate immediately. The Tax Rate Statement from the bond measure (see link given above by Scott Boyd) estimated that the tax rate would be 24.4 cents per $100 assessed valuation in 2003/2004, and that the highest tax rate would be 24.4 cents per $100. The…
November 04, 2007
[This is a continuation of the previous comment, which should be read first for the background.] Next, let's turn to the insinuations. It is simply a falsehood - i.e., an outright, blatant lie - that "no one has ever broached this topic," as Mr. Bulan asserts. The current board and staff have investigated several wells in private ownership within the District that have higher output than the typical residential well. None of these wells proved suitable for public use. The "Why not?" part of Mr. Bulan's…
November 04, 2007
The idea that "Put Community First" is truly interested in meeting community needs is demonstrably ludicrous. They would do better to keep the acronym, but change their name to "Political Conflict First" or maybe "Put Construction First" or even "Profits Come First". But definitely not "Put Community First". As an example, go to Richard Bulan's election campaign site http://www.richardbulan.org/index.html and read this claim: "Many local private wells are known to produce 60-100 gallons per minute.…
May 26, 2006
To be a bit more complete, voters who are registered as "Decline to State" may select a non-partisan ballot, or (for this election only) choose a ballot for a party primary that allows non-party affiliated voters access to their primary. That includes the Democratic, Republican, and American Independent parties. Because the registration deadline for this election has already passed (I think it was May 22), if you are registered in another political party it is too late to change your registration…
May 06, 2006
Brief Comparison of Emergency Systems (Part III) This is a very brief comparison of the existing 911 emergency systems, from my viewpoint as an acknowledged non-expert. Technical terminology has been avoided as much as possible; many simplifications and probably some errors are also included. This part addresses your typical cell phone emergency call. PROPOSED FAIL-SAFER 911 CALL FROM CELL PHONE: (1) Same as above. (2) Same as above, except the MSC that serves Coastside cell sites is located on the…
May 06, 2006
Brief Comparison of Emergency Systems (Part II) This is a very brief comparison of the existing 911 emergency systems, from my viewpoint as an acknowledged non-expert. Technical terminology has been avoided as much as possible; many simplifications and probably some errors are also included. This part addresses your typical cell phone emergency call. EXISTING 911 CALL FROM CELL PHONE: (1) Your cell phone listens for a radio message from a nearby cellular antenna, and when it finds one on the appropriate…
May 06, 2006
Brief Comparison of Emergency Systems (Part I) This is a very brief comparison of the existing 911 emergency systems, from my viewpoint as an acknowledged non-expert. Technical terminology has been avoided as much as possible; many simplifications and probably some errors are also included. This part addresses your typical home or business land-line emergency call. EXISTING 911 CALL FROM HOME LAND-LINE PHONE: (1) You pick up your real land-line phone connected directly to your "local loop" and receive…
May 06, 2006
[Continuation of Perk's rant, Part II.] (6) Fragmenting "Ma Bell" has, in many ways, been a disaster. In the old days, when "We may be the only phone company in town, but we try not to act like it" was AT&T's advertising slogan, network planners did a very good job of building a reliable, resilient, universally-compatible network. (It had to be able to survive an nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union and still work, remember?) Today, with "free market competition", we have redundant cell-phone carriers…
May 06, 2006
[Another long rant from Perk, Part I.] With all due respect to Lt. Quinlan, I must beg to differ significantly about our emergency contact alternatives. The Sheriff's Department should be commended for bringing additional deputies to the Coastside and placing them at various points in our communities so we could reach someone on foot or by car when our telephones failed to reach 911. This was fine two weeks ago. Thanks, guys. HOWEVER . . . (1) When the Big One hits the Bay Area and takes out those…
April 29, 2006
General Comments: (1) If you are not technically savvy, you might not have realized there was a problem at all. Those who are not regular Internet users and who did not have reason to try to call outside the coast (or who did and didn't realize the permanent busy or fast-busy was a symptom of a problem) may have been blissfully unaware there was anything wrong. This is a DANGEROUS condition if these people happened to face an emergency and depended on 911 service. (2) Landslides - and the closure…
April 29, 2006
My Observations: (1) Comcast Internet service at my location in Montara was interrupted (for remote sites) at 8:19 p.m. on Saturday, April 22 - nowhere close to the 10 p.m. time claimed for the landslide in some reports. (2) Our T1 service went out at the same time. (3) Regular land-line telephone service was spotty, sometimes successful, sometimes fast-busy to the same number. Local calls within Montara went through fine. Calls from the outside came through fine, too (but I don't know if there were…
Page 3 of 3 pages < 1 2 3
Facebook
Twitter
RSS