Boys and Girls Club president says unnamed planner verbally OK’d bulldozing

David Cline says he has one focus:  To get a club house built for the Boys and Girls Club of the Coastside.

It has been a long process. Cline, who is president of the group, says they originally leased the land for the building in 1997. At some point in the past, the property had been graded. Since then, while the group was waiting for Wavecrest to materialize, he says it was used as a corporation yard by the city of Half Moon Bay and was used to dump debris from the construction of the Sewer Authority Midcoastside plant at the end of the road.  We saw concrete and steel rebar all over the site.

His short-term plan, he says, was to use the land to grow pumpkins as a signature project for the organization. It would be a place where he could show the kids what was happening on their site, as well as the location for a fundraising event.

He approached the city about how to go about removing the debris from the site in preparation for building, and talked to Public Works Director Paul Nagengast.  As the subject moved from removing debris to grading the property, Nagengast told him that a Coastal Development Permit would be required.

Cline went back to the zoning ordinance, he says, and saw that the land was zoned for agriculture. The lease, he says, does not discuss agriculture. He went to the city planning department. "The senior planner wasn’t there.  I talked to another planner who was there."  He asked the planner, whom he declined to name, what he would need to do to prepare the land for agriculture. He was told that no permit would be required.  "He said to put up a sign. I put one up ten days ahead of time.  This time of year, we’d need to plant pumpkin seeds right away." The group’s phone number was on the sign and he says no one called to ask about the promised pumpkin patch.

When I asked if he had told the planner that he was going to grade the property, Cline said, "I told him we were going to prepare the ground for planting."

Cline talked to contractors and farmers for advice on preparing the land and planting pumpkins, and was ready to begin preparing the grounds. "I talked to the same planner. He said just go ahead and do it. We started scraping up the land.  There’s still a lot of debris on the site, it will require raking before disking [for planting]." Indeed, rebar can still be seen poking through the soil at some places.

As for his long-term goal, he just wants to build a community facility for kids and their parents.  "I’m interested in building a club. That’s all," he concluded.

Cline says he was unaware that the site might have contained wetlands.

David Johnston, environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game, says he walked the site

two years ago with City Manager Debra Ryan Auker and city council member Mike Ferreira when the city was considering selling the property to the Humane Society for a headquarters and adoption center.

"The site is likely to have wetlands. Some of the areas we walked through had pockets of wetland vegetation."  He said that a thorough analysis of a site can be expensive and take two to three years.

When I showed him the pictures of the site, his first question was, "Is Coastal involved?" That is, the Coastal Commission.

Johnston says it’s still possible to establish if Cline’s group graded wetlands. "You only need to meet one of three criteria to be considered wetlands in California: ponding duration, plant types, or glade soils. It’s harder to tell from the soils, but you can still do it."

At the end of the day Monday, city manager Debra Auker said the matter was still under investigation and that she’d report on it at the city council meeting Tuesday night.