Cypress Cove board attacks park funding

The Cypress Cove homeowners association has taken the offensive regarding Half Moon Bay’s park plans.  The association has paid an attorney to write letters asking that the city’s grant applications be denied, and has commissioned a poll of residents that asks them to rank the ways in which the park will harm the quality of life at the townhouse community located next to the park site.

"Please stop this grant Application its tracks". That’s the conclusion of two letters sent by Cypress Cove residents to the state Office of Grants and Local Services.  One letter refers to Half Moon Bay’s application for a Roberti-Z’Berg-Harris Grant and the other to an application for a Youth Soccer Grant. [I downloaded the grant application from Half Moon Bay Online.]

The letters are both signed by Sue Hyder, president of the Cypress Cove Townnhomes Association (CCTA), as well as other Cypress Cove residents.  The letter were written, according to Hyder, by attorney W. Stephen Wilson of Tobin & Tobin, and paid for by the Association.

You can download the letters from Coastsider. The Roberti-Z’Berg-Harris letter is principally about the traffic and parking needs the park will create and whether the city has adequately planned for it.  The Youth Soccer Grant letter deals with whether the city has been honest about its needs for soccer fields and concludes with a condemnation of the park planning process. The letter references the Mid-Coast Recreational Needs Assessment from October 2002 regarding demand for soccer fields.

CCTA board member Marty Troop told me, "The grant information may not be accurate, and it needs to be looked at again by [the granting agencies]."

Hyder told me that she has a couple of concerns. The first is the amount of traffic the parks might produce.  According to the letter, the grant application says that the estimated annual park visitation will be 100,000 people per year.

Her second concern is with the process.  The letter to the state about the Youth Soccer Grant says, "we believe that this is simply a clever process created to ratify a pre-ordained result."

City Council member Mike Ferreira says he’s surprised Cypress Cove’s board is unhappy with the park committee process.  He told me that the process is addressing their concerns, "At last week’s Park Committee meeting the clear consensus of the four workshop groups was that vehicles should enter via Highway 92 and exit via Stone Pine. Active facilities are to be in the eastern portion and passive facilities are to be in the western portion near the residents." He also said that the City Council has been clear that the grant applications were put together by City Hall staff to meet a deadline and that the money would not be accepted if unacceptable conditions were attached.

Ferreira expressed concern about attorney Wilson’s involvement in the attack on the city’s grant applications.  He said, "They have hired an extremely political attorney who has a political agenda and is pursuing it with association money."  Wilson has worked with political organizations on the Coastside that have opposed the current City Council majority.

Hyder says, "The association hired Wilson and he did not approach us."

Hyder acknowledges that there are supporters of the park process living in Cypress Cove. She says that’s the reason the Association has commissioned a survey to get "a clear sense of what the property owners want."

The survey asks respondents to rate their degree of agreement with three reasons why the new park would be good for the community and thirteen reasons why it would be bad for the quality of life in Cypress Cove. I’ve written surveys as a market research professional and this one doesn’t look neutral to me.

I asked Hyder whether the poll was a "push poll"—a poll designed to influence the respondent. 

Hyder said she wasn’t familiar with the term and pointed out that respondents can disagree with any assertion in the survey.  "The original version of the survey had a long list of negatives," she told me, and said she had sent it back for revisions. The survey was created based on background materials provided by the board to its author.

The survey also asks a series of questions that pertain more to City Council and School Board politics, such as the feelings about improvements to the city’s library and police headquarters, widening of Highway 92, and how they feel about the "direction the City of Half Moon Bay is moving".

Hyder told me those questions were on the survey at the request of the poll’s author Dave Cresson, of the Consumer Survey Center in Half Moon Bay. "He said that it was for his own information." She noted that the Association had a hard time finding a survey company they could afford, but that Cresson was local and gave them a good price.

The poll also asks residents about a new vision of the park. There are a couple of questions whether respondents would prefer for the "passive park" or "an active sports complex". No other options or combinations are offered.

What does Hyder want the city to do? "In our heart of heats we would like the city to put development of this property through the same rigorous process they would any other development in the city."