The Coastside’s middle school site is in play again

About fifty Coastsiders attended last night’s Cabrillo Unified School District reconsideration meeting. It’s beginning to look like a horse race between Cunha and Podesta.

The middle school discussion began with a presentation by Superintendent John Bayless. The presentation was very similar to his earlier presentations on middle school siting, with one major change. Three factors (Cost, Environment, and Political Implications) have been given a lot more emphasis, and now represent 60% of the possible points.  There was a strong sentiment expressed by Bayless and the board for reducing the risk of their next decision becoming sidetracked by external forces.

Cost would have to include a calculation of risk that the site would take too long (or forever) to build on.  Bayless told the meeting that the cost of the steel required for construction has tripled in recent years. Also, the length of the administrative pipeline for school construction has also been increasing.

The new values for the middle school criteria are shown in the table at right.  Dr. Bayless declined to assign points to the locations, saying that was a policy function. At the end of the meeting, the board decided to put together a commission to evaluate the sites.

About fifteen members of the public spoke before the Board. The comments were roughly equally in favor of Podesta and Cunha. Nearly everyone spoke of the urgency of getting the school built. No one spoke up for Wavecrest.

A new political alignment emerged last night. Residents of the Highland Park neighborhood (who have been battling the city giving the proposed Pacific Ridge development access to Highway 1 via Terrace Ave. in their neighborhood) support the Podesta site if it can be used by Pacific Ridge residents for access. This would make Podesta a potentially easy solution to a sticky political problem in Half Moon Bay.

I took a stab at giving points to the three sites using the District’s new criteria points.  In my analysis, Cunha dominated with 94 points, Podesta had 67 points and Wavecrest came in at a miserable 40.  My guess is that your analysis will differ.  You can download my spreadsheet and try your own hand at evaluating the sites.