Half Moon Bay Review/Mark Noack, 9/20/13. "Open-space trust meets skeptical crowd."
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| Sure, you got your open space ecology, but what about our sustainable economy? |
"The Peninsula Open Space Trust has bought up huge swaths of the rural South Coast over the last few decades. Thousands of acres in the Pescadero region are now conserved under POST’s guidance, but some locals contend that nonprofit control could be taking an unintended toll on the community and its services.
On Sept. 10, a testy crowd packed a meeting of the Pescadero Municipal Advisory
Council to question POST
representatives on their role in the community. Planned for months, the
meeting was meant to demystify the land trust’s workings for the public,
and, in turn, give POST officials a chance to hear local concerns, said
PMAC Chairman Ken Pesso. It ended up being the most well-attended PMAC
meeting in recent memory, he said.
.... POST officials disagreed with many complaints from the audience. POST
“made every effort” to be fair in leasing land to locals, Ringgold said.
He also denied accusations that POST was taking away housing on the
South Coast by demolishing homes it had purchased. At various times, Ringgold reminded the audience his group’s mission was specifically to provide recreation and conservation. Read article.
Reference - Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST). Related - BAhiker.com, "Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve, CA State parks, San Mateo County." Note: photograph by Jan Huber from this website.
Posted by Kathy Meeh
27 comments:
POSTS agenda is to push Agenda 21. Demolish all signs of housing and make life so difficult for rural family, farms and business that they go bankrupt.
Factually, POST's Mission and Vision is:
Our Mission
POST protects and cares for open space, farms and parkland in and around Silicon Valley.
Our Vision
POST is shaping a vibrant ecosystem for Silicon Valley – a network of protected lands that provide scenic beauty, clean air and water, locally grown food, and a place for people and wildlife to thrive. These lands will be preserved forever so that present and future generations can live in harmony with nature, in a careful balance of urban and rural landscapes that make our region extraordinary.
Our Impact
Since its founding in 1977, POST has been responsible for saving more than 70,000 acres as permanent open space and parkland in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. These lands are now part of the National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, California State Parks, county and city parks, regional preserves and private farmland. They are places of natural beauty and abundance that have come to define our region.
1:46, the direct POST quote was referenced on the above article link. (Please let us know your source and link when you directly quote information).
FACTUALLY the mission, vision, and proclaimed impact as stated by POST does not mean that POST and other open space organizations and agencies are not gobbling up too much land for open space purposes. As you know, we're living with the outfall from too much unproductive open space in Pacifica.
Meeh, "...living with the outfall." What a wonderful way to describe life in Pacifica. Everything in this town becomes sewer-related.
When the openly stated goal of an organization is to keep things rural, they will gobble as much as they can for as long as they can. These are tax-exempt groups. The only surprise is how long it takes before communities wake up to the loss of property tax revenue and the far-reaching and irreparable economic harm. Pacifica could be the poster child.
Kathy
It has nothing to do with the enviroment. It is about controling the city council.
Also the beach group. Lynn Adams, gets money out of the MY Child's Earth settlement with the sewage spill. 7.5 million gallons of poop gets spilled into the Ocean and she is only looking to make a pay day.
I don't understand how they snuck this into the settlement agreement. She has to be friends with Cecilia.
400 any other ideas? that one hasn't panned out.
437 Really? You don't understand? Think high school. Every Council has its most favored nations. No Pacifica City Council will abandon enviro causes. Adams is an easy, safe one for politicians to support. What's not to like? She inspires people to pick up trash for free. Jeez, let her run this city.
4:40
Look who endorsed Mary Ann & Ervin. All the hippies and nimbys.
631 Well, duh. I'd worry more right now about their army of supporters among the school and library crowd and how that plays on Nov. 5th.
Speaking of the school and library crowd. Word on the street is they had a rather large panic meeting one night.
All the regs were in attendence!
850 Do tell us more if you actually have any more to tell.
Our Children's Earth, rather than just fining Pacifica for the beach spill, allowed the city to spend the money on several local projects that help to keep the beaches clean, including the Beach Coalition.
That's taxpayer money and better spent on fixing more laterals and better sewer maintenance. Did Council make the decision? The beach volunteers will still be there with or without that money.
Our Childrens Earth sued the city of Pacifica regarding the 7.5 million gallon sewage spill. The one batch reactor was broke down for almost 8 months causing our state of the art plant had need have the parts made special for this state of the art plant.
Our Childrens Earth, is a non profit enviromental watch dog group like SF Baykeeper, and the Surfrider Foundation.
They have no fine authority. The California Department of Water Resorces fined Pacifica, regarding the sewage spill. In the settlement agreement, Cecilia and her great rolodex spinning and outsourcing every legal matter, worked it up in the settlement to give The Beach Coalition part of the money.
Everyone in Lower Linda Mar on the Anza side gets a free sewer laterial and everyone else in town pays full bore.minus the $1,000 dollar the city refunds property owners Fair, I think not.
Cecilia, also changed the homeowner responsibility to the middle of the street where the house main lateral connects to the city sewer.
My biggest problem with the Beach Coalition getting any money is she never said a word about the sewer spill. Neither did one memember of the gang of no.
If you people were true enviromentalists you should have been outraged that 7.5 million gallons of untreated sewage went into the ocean at Rockaway Beach.
That is why I will and will continue to call out the gang of no for leading Pacifica, into the great state of disrepair the city is in. Had we had some revenue in the quarry and the old waste water treatment plant, maybe the batch reactor would have worked properly.
And don't give me any shit about the storm being a 100 year storm. It rained about 2.5 inches n a couple hours, not a big storm.
850pm Oh I wouldn't worry about the Yes on V gang. Probably got together to decide how to spend all the donations they've collected from "interested" organizations and individuals. When do they have to make that list public? It'll make for real interesting reading.
Because of the lack of business tax revenues, the previous NIMBY councils were taking sewer tax money intended to maintain the sewers and water treatment plant, and instead using it for day to day operation of the city.
CA Supreme Court Bighorn Decision July of 2006 put a stop to the widespread looting of sewer tax monies by cities including Pacifica. Pacifica padded its general fund with hundreds of thousands of dollars EACH YEAR for many years...$400K to $750K yearly.
That would have paid for a lot of maintenance and avoided the mess we're in now. When you pay for your lateral and the increased sewer fees, remember, you already paid once. Any Council would be tempted by all that money lying around. Thank the CA Supreme Court for a very fine decision!
$1,000,000 dollars of street maintence should have been spent per year on the city streets, this money was also diverted into the general fund.
Haven't seen a Pacifica City Council yet that doesn't play kick the can down the road. Having access to those sewer funds must have been exhilarating. Now, they just float and refi bonds or run a tax scam. Don't fret. Under no circumstances would they ever resort to revenue creating development. Our shanty town is safe.
If I paid $5000+ for a new lateral then saw the city paid for a select few to be replaced I'd have them in small claims court in a heartbeat. Watch for a slew of lawsuits on this. Or one big class action suit. The city can not pick and chose who pays themselves and who they will pay taxpayer money to fix their laterals. It's illegal.
$50,000,000 million dollar bond to fix the state of the art poop plant.
$35,000,000 million dollar bond to build the state of the art library.
Anyone remember the cost over runs for the first state of the art poop plant and Police Station?
"The city can not pick and chose who pays themselves and who they will pay taxpayer money to fix their laterals."
There does seem to be something inherently unfair about that.
It seems very unfair. How was the decision made? How much money was there? Instead of tossing it away on various volunteers, why not pay for more laterals? Aren't taxpayers the ultimate volunteers in this town? Why not divvy the money up equally? The City is probably afraid equal shares wouldn't be enough to fix a lateral and people might delay so they went for the sure thing of paying 100% on a small group of the worst laterals. If people have to delay that's an individual decision and right, but we all should have an equal share available in a city account to repair laterals. Particularly since we have all paid for this before through the sewer taxes that the City squandered. This Council may not be squandering the sewer taxes (because it's now illegal to do so), but they're ripping people off all the same. This could very well be an illegal action by Council.
The reason why the city gets away with this kind of BS, is because they can. The city was way behind replacing laterals they made this proposal to keep in compliance with the settlement.
No one opposes them, the same 3 people show up at city council meetings, and each election the goons who bankrupted the city keep getting reelected.
It's just switching chairs on a sinking ship.
Three words on Pacifica's headstone...land use decisions. After decades of really bad ones, only scraps are left to develop to generate revenue. Scraps. That might generate a few realtor commissions but it's chump change compared to what we need every year. Taxpayers are the go-to revenue source for Pacifica and it was inevitable that a council of tax and spenders would end up running Pacifica. No other skills or ideologies required from here on out, although the myth of development dies hard. Election campaigns create their own brief reality for voters and probably for candidates as well.
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