Pacifica Riptide

Opinion: City Tax Collectors "Cowardly" and "Abusive"

By Todd Bray, Riptide Correspondent

Every year for the past four years, city staff and council have been constantly looking for ways to raise taxes on Pacificans rather than adjust compensation. It's cowardly and by now abusive: abusive of their position, abusive of what revenues the city has, and abusive of property owners who call Pacifica home.

Here is the most recent study Pacifica Survey Summary of Results 06-17-13 that staff and council have commissioned to find out how to tax property owners more to save the dollar value of their paychecks, rather than reduce their compensation in accordance with our local revenues, in much the same way that we in the real world have done to save the jobs of our co-workers rather than throw them under the bus.

County Supervisor District Boundary Meetings: June 25, July 11

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – A committee that will review the boundaries of San Mateo County’s supervisorial districts and possibly recommend changes will hold a series of meetings throughout the county. The final two meetings are June 25 in East Palo Alto and July 11 in Millbrae. Details are below.

The Board of Supervisors created the nine-member boundary adjustment committee after voters changed the County Charter in November. The change requires that only voters within a district can elect a supervisor who lives in that same district to represent them. Under the prior system voters countywide elected all five supervisors.
 
With heightened interest in district-based elections, the Board of Supervisors tasked the committee with hearing public comment, studying current and potential boundaries and recommending possible adjustments.
 
The committee and public will receive a report from a demographer and then learn how to use an online mapping tool to review the current boundaries and draw possible districts. The committee will also receive public comment.

Tuesday, June 25 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., East Palo Alto Council Chambers, 2415 University Avenue, East Palo Alto
 
Thursday, July 11 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., Millbrae Community Center, 477 Lincoln Circle, Millbrae
 
At the final meeting in Millbrae, it is anticipated the committee will consider possible draft boundary changes. An additional five meetings will be held in late summer to present possible draft changes to the public for comment before any recommendation is presented to the full Board of Supervisors.
 
Under State election law, districts must be approximately equal in population. In establishing the boundaries of the districts the Board of Supervisors may give consideration to the following factors: (a) topography, (b) geography, (c) cohesiveness, contiguity, integrity, and compactness of territory, and (d) community of interests of the districts."

The committee members chosen by the Board are: Supervisors Adrienne J. Tissier and Warren Slocum; Gonzalo “Sal” Torres, Daly City Council Member; Laura Martinez, East Palo Alto Council Member; and public members: (1st Supervisorial District) -- Hayden Lee of Millbrae; (2nd Supervisorial District) -- Raymond Lee of San Mateo; (3rd Supervisorial District) -- Barbara Arietta of Pacifica; (4th Supervisorial District) -- William Nack of Menlo Park; and (5th Supervisorial District) -- Rebecca Ayson of Daly City.
 
Each public member resides in one of the five current districts. Additional information about the process will be posted at www.smcgov.org/bos under “Supervisorial District Lines Advisory Committee.”

The Briarpatch: Highway 1 Widening and Recology's MRF

04-3819 ROW Letter dated March 4, 2009

I received this letter (click link above) dated March 4, 2009 from a standard Public Records Act request to Caltrans based on information from a highway-widening Project Development Team meeting in 2008 about the 55-acre parcel of land next to the Lutheran Church on Highway 1 in the widening-project area.

The letter (in 2009) promised the property owner highway access, which it currently does not have, after the highway is widened, if ever. This is the same piece of property where Pacifica's former waste hauler Coastside Scavenger had planned to build its 60-foot-tall Materials Recovery Facility (MRF).

I've made several attempt to contact Recology of the Coast General Manager Chris Porter by email and through local blogs she routinely posts on to ask if Recology of the Coast is making a bid for this property to build a MRF. To date, I have not received a reply.

Todd McCune Bray

Conservative Republican @ IRS Launched Tea Party Probe

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Pacifican Challenges Highway 1 Widening Plan

Letter to Pacifica City Council

Peter Loeb questions City Council's role in the highway-widening project plan.

Going Overboard at City Hall: Is It a Sinking Ship?

With Steve Rhodes and Ann Ritzma leaving Pacifica city government soon for greener pastures, we hear that other city officials want to join the exodus. Can you blame them? Who will right the ship?

Shotspotter: Tracking Things That Go Bump in the Night

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Are you sick of hearing loud explosions all over town, but no sirens descending on the guilty parties? Maybe Pacifica should look into installing something like Shotspotter, a highly effective tracking system used in other communities to help police track down bad guys who illegally fire their guns, explode devices, and otherwise disturb the peace.

Open Space Committee Survives — For Now

By Dan Underhill, Riptide Correspondent

In 1989, Pacifica City Council recognized a need and instituted the Open Space Committee to advise the council on open-space issues. Those council members recognized that none of them had the expertise or the time, with all their other responsibilities, to develop and maintain the mind-set necessary to properly understand open-space issues in Pacifica.

The Open Space Committee never really had any teeth and has operated mainly in an advisory capacity, helping council understand issues that might not be immediately obvious unless they were one's primary focus.

For the past two years, council has failed to appoint new Open Space Committee members to replace those who had died or resigned, which led to speculation that council was opting to let the committee die of neglect. Without sufficient members for a quorum, the committee could not function.

The only reason I could think of (please pardon my cynicism) for council eliminating the committee (or replacing it with a new committee severely limited in its scope) would be for plausible deniability of serious ramifications of some terribly ill-advised project or projects.

No Open Space Committee means no official notification of council on these issues. There are always moneyed developers ready to build as shoddily and densely as they possibly can get away with. The imagination reels.

Luckily, it is not as bad as many of us had feared. I got in on the tail end of last week's council meeting via Pacifica Community Television (TV26), and was pleased to hear in the final moments that council is willing to give it further thought and not eliminate the Open Space Committee.

It may be that particular functions (for example, interfacing with GGNRA and the National Park Service) will be handled by a subcommittee of the Open Space Committee rather than being the fig leaf that covers intentional elimination of the committee. We can all thank and encourage our council for this.

Ban the Bag: Get Plastic Out of the Environment

Bag Bans Across America

Our effort to ban plastic bags is under attack! The plastics industry is airing radio and TV ads across the state making false and misleading claims about the environmental impacts of its product.

We are just days away from a "live or die" vote in the State Senate on SB 405 (Padilla), which would ban single-use plastic bags in California. We need you to take three simple steps to support our efforts:

(1) Sign our petition in support of SB 405.
(2) Make a special contribution to support our campaign.
(3) Forward this message to your family and friends, and repost it on social media.

The plastics industry is pulling out all the stops and we have to be ready to respond. These corporate giants continue to rake in profits. We can’t match them dollar for dollar. But with our drive and passion, and support from people like you who care about the impacts of plastic-bag pollution, we can make a difference!

We’ve been working to ban single-use plastic bags for years. It’s time for the rest of the state to join the 75 California communities like Pacifica that are taking a leadership role by passing local ordinances and standing up to the plastics industry in the process. Let’s do this! Thanks so much for your support.

Californians Against Waste, 921-11th Street, Suite 420, Sacramento, CA 95814  
Phone: 916-443-5422 

Ann Ritzma to Be Foster City Human Resources Director

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