Supervisors unmoved by LCP pleas from Coastsiders

After hearing more testimony from citizens this morning, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors is moving ahead with its subcommittee’s recommendations for changes to the Midcoast Local Coastal Program. After an hour of testimony today and three hours last Tuesday, the supervisors made no concessions on the issues raised repeatedly by Coastside citizens: changing the 2% growth rate to 1% to be comparable with Pacific and Half Moon Bay, counting affordable housing units as part of Midcoast growth, rezoning the Montara Bypass as open space, or addressing infrastructure issues before authorizing more growth.

Today’s citizen testimony was weighted more heavily in favor of the subcommittee’s faster-growth (2% per year) recommendations than the slower growth (1% per year ) recommendations of the Midcoast Community Council and county Planning Commission.  Some 19 speakers supported the subcommittee’s recommendations to one degree or another, and 9 spoke in favor of the MCC/Planning Commission version. We’ll post a note when Coastsider’s album of speakers and positions has been updated, later this week.

At the conclusion of an hour of citizen testimony, the only modifications to the plan requested of the staff were to say that Highway 1 would not necessarily be widened continuously between Devil’s Slide and Half Moon Bay, check into the legality of income limits on affordable units at the request of the San Mateo County Association of Realtors, look into flooding and stormwater issues, avoid "checkerboarding" in mergers of substandard lots, look into giving failed wells a higher priority for water connections, and the apparently self-contradictory goal of maintaining the Burnham Strip in El Granada as open space while working with property owners.

Supervisor Rich Gordon said that while the supervisors wanted to preserve the Montara Bypass as open space, they want to work with Caltrans rather than rezoning immediately.

The supervisors will probably not return to the LCP before their meeting on January 24.  At subsequent meetings, the supervisors will make tentative recommendations on those items they have not already addressed and direct staff to draw up the ordinances. So, there will be at least two more public meetings before the whole thing gets sent to the Coastal Commission, but there will be no more public testimony.