Coastal Commission legislative director answers HMB’s “misinformation and inaccuracies”

Coastal Commission legislative director Sarah Christie has taken on what she calls "misinformation and inaccuracies" in Half Moon Bay’s response to her initial letter on the deficiencies in AB1991. In a sharply-worded letter to Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Protempore Don Perata [pdf], Christie rather contemptuously takes apart the city’s counterattack, making the following points:

• The city "ignores the obvious fact" that the process of AB1991 creates a precedent for future legislation.

 

• The city makes the "insinuation ... that it is somehow the Commission’s fault that the City finds itself in its current predicament",  because it consulted the Commission before it denied the 85-parcel subdivision of Beachwood and the denial was upheld by the state appeals court.

 

• The city’s assertion that the Commission’s approval of 19 parcels on Beachwood was illegal because the Commission lacked juridiction is "incomplete and therefore misleading".

 

• The city "derisively dismissed" the Commission’s offer of assistance, because the Commission didn’t offer to pay its bond or legal fees—which it does not have the authority to do. However, says Christie, the Commission offered an amicus brief represented by the Attorney General’s office.

 

• The city said that the inclusion of Glencree in the settlement was not arbitrary, "because… most importantly, the plaintiff, ‘Chop’ Keenan, demanded it. We think the City’s response speaks for itself and makes our original point quite well."

 

• The city’s claim that the property would be built out by now, but for the city’s sewer moratorium, is not only "unlikely, it is irrelevant. The City might as well point to all the development that would already be built out today if the Coastal Act had never been passed, or CEQA, the Endangered Species Act, or any General Plan law".

The Commission’s legislative director concludes by saying that the legislature should "let the bill die, so that the City can pursue the escape clause it agreed to in the settlement…and…work with the community and interested stakeholders".

Click below to see the letter embedded in the page, or click here for the pdf.