By Mark Stechbart & Jim Wagner
After last Monday’s Council meeting confusion over protecting our neighborhoods from ocean flooding, it’s clear we are in for a long year-long slog.
After 5 years and innumerable reports, the California Coastal Commission authorized San Francisco to repair and reinforce the golf course sea wall. SF pays for the work, not Pacifica.
The City of Pacifica will be on the record with a letter to SF expressing the need and urgency to begin work on long deferred Sharp Park sea wall maintenance before the winter storms. All our neighborhoods north and south of the course will benefit from the protection.
The good news is common sense and rational practicality carried the day by a narrow 3-2 vote.
A great deal for Pacifica, right? Well, we have two votes on the Council (and people in the audience) that don't have a concern for or see any urgency in the possibility of winter storms breaching the Sharp Park sea wall.
We actually have folks in this town who want to debate sea wall maintenance that protects our neighborhoods rather than act now to prepare for storms we know are on their way.
This curious wait and debate mentality leads us to raise a caution flag on the underlying process of shoreline protection planning. The devil is always in the details. The cure is complete open government as this very important process unfolds.
City Council has an Ad Hoc Meeting Group to discuss shoreline protection. They last met October 27 with no public notice or public participation. This group discussed a) creating a technical work group; b) frequency and method of project updates to Council and the public; c) discuss community sensitivity regarding scenario/horizon recommendations… (what does that even mean??); d) future meeting schedule.
This Ad Hoc group is thought to be responsible for citizen appointments for a coastal planning advisory group which will meet three times through August 2018.
We raise these issues to mandate complete transparency and full community input. All coastal planning and shoreline protection meetings and advisory groups need to be fully noticed in the Tribune and the city website; videoed by community TV 26; full public testimony opportunities on all items and compete minutes. Just like city council and all affiliated city committee meetings.
Ad Hoc meeting minutes from October 27 are not available. The meeting was behind closed doors.
Let’s open this to the public. The nature of the Ad Hoc discussions are no different than a Council study session.
When citizen advisory applications are reviewed, let’s conduct a normal public interview process to evaluate applicants. The applications need to be posted on the city website.
All documents and committee emails must be a public record, just like Council’s are now.
In all meetings, the public gets 3 minutes to discuss items not specifically on the agenda and also on each discussion item before a decision is made by the committee. Again, copies Council’s practice since 1957.
This is the boring minutia of making government work for everyone in town. Some people may dismiss this as overboard. However, some people in town want to endlessly talk about the present ocean rise danger to our homes, businesses and Hwy 1, without any urgency to act. We think that’s overboard.
But at the end of day, City Council, open the currently closed doors. And please explain what “discuss community sensitivity regarding scenario/horizon recommendations” means. Does not sound good.
( Wagner and Stechbart are long term Pacifica residents active in the Pacifica Business and Community PAC supporting forward looking solutions to Pacifica issues)
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this agenda contains the items I was complaining about in guest column... last item indecipherable, rest significant with no detail...
this is why ad hoc meetings need to be public and recorded...
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Submitted by Mark Stechbart
