CYPRESS POINTLESS: BUILD IT AND WE ALL WILL SUFFER

opposition

 

Comments

[Carl May]

Only legal challenges have any chance of affecting this gross assault on our neighborhood and Moss Beach community. Given the steamrolling by county government, it has been that way for some time now.

The county's approval of the use of AB1449 to exempt the project from CEQA review is fraught with factual errors that fly in the face of the actual requirements of the statute. This and a few other obvious semantic misplays by county government should provide yet another opportunity for a lawsuit, but MidcoastECO, serving us citizens, has its hands full and fundraising strained by activities already under way. Lawsuits cost money (duh).

When we held off the county- and Caltrans-pushed Devil's Slide Bypass freeway for several decades with legal action, it took a coalition of local citizens, a locally based nonprofit called CPR1, the Shamrock Ranch, the Sierra Club, and the Committee for Green Foothills to energize citizens, carry the torches, and raise necessary funds and some political support. In all the large, damaging overdevelopments loaded onto the Midcoast since--the twin oversize tunnels, hotel and RV developments at Princeton Harbor, Big Wave, Cypress Point, shenanigans for expanding and urbanizing Highway 1, development-serving LCP revisions, etc.--there has been no such unification to provide a critical mass of support. Indeed, some elements of the old coalition have turned coat and sold out on some of the developments in the spirit of "compromise." One is left to wonder if those of us who wish to live our lives well in naturally nurturing surroundings are even capable of uniting with sufficient force to counter the self-serving controlling forces relentlessly degrading our futures. Well, at least MidcoastECO is trying in spite of the rigged odds. They deserve our donations, encouragement, and, if one likes their style, participation.

"Don't go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all. Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as creativity, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability -- whether they are easily measured or not." (Kenneth E. Boulding)

[Carl May]

The fix is in on this one. The vote of the Planning Commission last week was pitiful, with no serious discussion of the many real-world specific issues raised in testimony and letters. The many specific disqualifications from the language of AB1449 noted in the letter from the MCC and the testimony of Ann Rothman and others--a bill passed at the state level to exempt certain so-called "affordable housing" projects from CEQA and being used inappropriately by San Mateo County to get around a CEQA review--were ignored by the commissioners. The reverse-racist tropes and dog whistles used in testimony by several Spanish speakers (who, I strongly suspect, had the words fed to them) were disgusting to those who know how such things are played--much like how developmentally disabled young people were misused to get sympathy for Big Wave.

Overlooked is the fact that that any people eventually moving into this project will have to deal with the same degraded transportation and safety environment as the existing neighborhood and travelers that will be harmed by the spillovers from the development. And no single families in the income ranges required will be able to afford units, anyway, once their vehicle and commuting costs (there are no jobs in the area), water, sewer, utilities, etc., are added on to their rents. So there will be, inevitably, multiple families crowded into the units that will far exceed the planned population, number of vehicles, water usage, and other numbers being used in the railroading of the project. There are no contingency plans for when such things happen, as they have already happened elsewhere on the coastside.

So who will benefit from this mess? All people need a healthy, safe place to live with a modicum of stability and dignity. No longer able to use the "urban redevelopment" scam during which many millions of dollars were flushed down contrived rabbit holes without improvement to the lives of lower-income people (and often destroying the communities of those same people), politicians have now developed a new feel-good replacement called "affordable housing." Politicians can say they are doing something about the affordability problem. Government staff jobs are created or enlarged to shepherd the projects. Nonprofits or private developers spearheading the new housing gain financially and in societal power and authority. Builders and the suppliers of materials make money. Almost everyone else loses.