On Feb. 27, three representatives of the San Mateo County Harbor District got on airplanes for a trip across the country to the California Marine Affairs and Navigation Conference in Washington, D.C. The trip at taxpayers’ expense was preapproved by Harbor Commissioners, two of whom made the…
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On Feb. 27, three representatives of the San Mateo County Harbor District got on airplanes for a trip across the country to the California Marine Affairs and Navigation Conference in Washington, D.C. The trip at taxpayers’ expense was preapproved by Harbor Commissioners, two of whom made the…
At a time of polarization, when so many Americans can agree on so little, Meals on Wheels stands as an exemplar. Whatever quibbles one might have with the way the program is run (and, frankly, we know of none), there is no arguing with the premise: Far too many of our elders are hungry and l…
Perhaps the best part of any goal-setting exercise is the engagement of participants and the wisdom of a group working together in a creative endeavor. When government agencies set goals for the coming year, it’s interesting to see what they come up with, of course, but the best part may be …
Most of us living along the state’s coast tend to think of the California Coastal Commission as another faceless bureaucracy. We might think that it rules from on high, considering parochial issues that are monumentally important to us locals but don’t always extend beyond our county borders…
Run. Hide. Fight.
It was possible on Thursday night, amid the gentle amber glow of a beer purchased at the Mavericks House in Princeton, to think we were headed toward a better day. Legislators speaking at the Brews and Views event want to hold utilities and state and local government authorities to account s…
California Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on the I.D.E.S. grounds in downtown Half Moon Bay under a blindingly blue sky on the day after a gunman killed seven co-workers in a town previously known for its pumpkins. He recalled the names of similar towns, quiet places, that were barely a speck on th…
Whether you call it a sinkhole, a void, a cavern or the blue-light special, the hole that opened in Highway 92 last week is a nightmare for Coastsiders. So, perhaps it doesn’t matter what you call it.
The series of storms that hit the Bay Area over the New Year’s weekend and early this week caused flooding … on the Coastside on Monday and the closure of the Devil’s Slide section of Highway 1 Monday afternoon.
At the end of another hard-working day, Juana and Carolina traveled through the chill and the growing darkness to meet the town’s newspaper editor in the dim, mostly empty La Piazza courtyard just off of Half Moon Bay’s Main Street. Lord knows they had better things to do with their precious…
Al final de otro día de trabajo duro, Juana y Carolina atravesaron el frío y la creciente oscuridad para reunirse con el editor del periódico de la ciudad en el poco iluminado y casi vacío patio de La Piazza, justo al lado de la calle principal de Half Moon Bay. Dios sabe que tenían cosas me…
It’s time to save journalism in a country that literally depends on it. In fact, it’s past time.
How much do you cherish your voting rights? Would you travel to another country to secure free elections? Would you seek citizenship in a foreign land so that you had a say in the governance of your child’s school?
My adult daughter calls this week’s big holiday “Thankstaking.” Anyone who will be sitting down to a big dinner of plenty in the expansive former home of the Ohlone people will be hard-pressed to argue with her. However the holiday has evolved, it hearkens back to a great taking.
Assuming the results hold, it appears incumbent Sue Beckmeyer and first-time candidate Christine Boles have earned seats on the Pacifica City Council. The Nov. 8 general election also brought more money to City Hall in the form of a sales tax increase, but little clarity to the debate over f…
One hundred and fifty years ago this month, a deputy U.S. marshal arrested noted social reformer Susan B. Anthony. The charge? “Wrongfully and unlawfully” voting for a candidate for Congress in Rochester, N.Y. The indictment noted she was “a person of the female sex.” She was ultimately conv…
On Saturday, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier brought her farewell tour to Half Moon Bay. It was as if the Grateful Dead announced its final show would be in a middle school gym on the coast. The only thing missing was the tie-dye and the smell of marijuana in the wind. It was definitely a Bay Area moment.
Like insurance, the Harbor Patrol is merely an expense on the ledger until it’s the only thing that matters. Be that as it may, the San Mateo County Harbor District, which manages and funds the ocean rescue crews, says standing ready, 24 hours a day, for a maritime emergency is an expensive …
On Nov. 8, voters in Pacifica will decide the fate of a tax measure that proponents say is necessary to keep the city safe and beautiful and opponents claim will leave you holding the bag and even open to privacy concerns. In short, Measure Y is either utterly necessary or a terrible choice.
The second California gold rush that was the legalization of cannabis cultivation and the retail sales of that product has gone bust. At least that is the word from many in an industry that is saddled with unsupportable regulation and slow to recover from the travails that buffeted most busi…
The last couple of years have surely been a test for students of all ages. Ditto for parents and school teachers and administrators. They’ve lived through months of fear and trepidation, best efforts to make do with virtual classes, and now an uncertain return that has included confusion ove…
For several years now there have been growing calls for citizen oversight of our Sheriff’s Office and others around the country. It’s such a good idea as to be obvious. Your local police departments need civilian oversight for the same reason the nation’s military needs it: Men with guns and…
After our front-page story last week on proposed changes to the City Council code of conduct, Pacifica City Manager Kevin Woodhouse was kind enough to try and explain where he thought we went wrong.
Happy TDM Week!
The SMC Alert sounded dire and indeed it was. “Extreme heat is straining the energy grid. Conserve energy now to protect public health and safety … Power interruptions may occur unless you take action.”
The Tribune’s Grace Scullion recently wrote about an unfortunate development in modern public meetings, true here in Pacifica and elsewhere: They are growing longer and later. Accompanying her Aug. 24 story was a bar graph showing that Pacifica City Council meetings averaged less than four h…
Observant readers may have noticed that over the last month we’ve begun to report on government meetings differently. That’s intentional, obviously.
There is a lot of talk of the importance of democracy and the republic these days. You can’t turn on a cable television news show without hearing that someone is either saving it or subverting it.
“A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
San Mateo County needs civilian oversight to keep meaningful watch over the Sheriff’s Office. And, with the help of a powerful citizen-led nonprofit and a newly elected sheriff, now is the time to get it.
As if we needed another reason to completely ban fireworks in Pacifica — as the vast majority of Bay Area governments did long ago — consider the vegetation fire that sent plumes of smoke over parts of the coast on July 27. And consider, too, that it could have been much worse.
If one hate crime is a disconcerting anomaly, then what is three?
In today’s newspaper, staff writer Peter Tokofsky looks at a forgotten corner of many public meetings — the consent agenda. It may signal the mundane machinations of government that can’t possibly be of interest to mere taxpayers, but that is often not the case. In fact, sometimes, elected o…
I am writing these words in the hours following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning the 50-year precedent created by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. They will change the mind of no one.
I am writing these words in the hours following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning the 50-year precedent created by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. They will change the mind of no one.
What is it about a rainbow flag that drives some people nuts? Are they just colorphobic? Do they take offense at flags generally? Or is the idea that all people might be welcome — in our communities, at our civic events, in our schoolyards — just too much to take for people who don’t want to…
On Saturday, hundreds of people turned out for a March for Our Lives rally in Pacifica. It was one among hundreds of such events across the country. The movement grew out of a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. Surviving students formed a nonp…
Webster’s Dictionary says, “graduation is the conferring or receipt of an academic degree or diploma marking successful completion of studies” and “a ceremony at which degrees or diplomas are conferred.”
Last week, during one in an ongoing series of meetings local government officials are calling “2022: Our Year of Working Together to End Homelessness,” those doing that work acknowledged that the end of homelessness remains elusive. In fact, by some measures, despite massive effort and recor…
On Monday morning, a neighbor near the senior complex in Half Moon Bay heard an unusual droning noise and looked out the window to see what was going on. What she saw would have been nothing out of the ordinary a couple of years ago. But given the precarious nature of the state’s water resou…
Loosening restrictions. A new, highly transmissible subvariant. So here we are.
If there is one thing we learned from the panic over the future of Pacifica’s Boys and Girls Clubs, it’s how important these facilities are on the coast, across the Peninsula and throughout the United States. The world needs more — not fewer — safe, inclusive spaces for kids of all backgrounds.
For years, decades actually, people around the world have known about the dangers of climate change and sea level rise and largely chosen to ignore our collective fraught future. There are a number of reasons for that willful denial. One of them is that it’s sometimes difficult to picture wh…
Lost in the wake of world events that include an unfathomable war in Ukraine, global supply chain issues that only seem to worsen and galloping inflation on the home front is the fact that the pandemic is entering its third year. You remember the pandemic, don’t you? Masks, vaccines, social …
Seventy years ago, a bow-tie-wearing San Francisco Chronicle reporter named Michael Harris penned a 10-part series he called “Your Secret Government.” His expose on what happened behind closed doors in Bay Area government offices was important but not nearly as important as the law that came…
Now we’re cooking with gas. … But should we?
I am an architect. One of the requirements for obtaining a license is a commitment to public safety; we commit to reporting unsafe issues we see, even those that aren’t related to our work.
At a time of polarization, when so many Americans can agree on so little, Meals on Wheels stands as an exemplar. Whatever quibbles one might have with the way the program is run (and, frankly, we know of none), there is no arguing with the premise: Far too many of our elders are hungry and l…
Perhaps the best part of any goal-setting exercise is the engagement of participants and the wisdom of a group working together in a creative endeavor. When government agencies set goals for the coming year, it’s interesting to see what they come up with, of course, but the best part may be …
Most of us living along the state’s coast tend to think of the California Coastal Commission as another faceless bureaucracy. We might think that it rules from on high, considering parochial issues that are monumentally important to us locals but don’t always extend beyond our county borders…
Run. Hide. Fight.
It was possible on Thursday night, amid the gentle amber glow of a beer purchased at the Mavericks House in Princeton, to think we were headed toward a better day. Legislators speaking at the Brews and Views event want to hold utilities and state and local government authorities to account s…
California Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on the I.D.E.S. grounds in downtown Half Moon Bay under a blindingly blue sky on the day after a gunman killed seven co-workers in a town previously known for its pumpkins. He recalled the names of similar towns, quiet places, that were barely a speck on th…
Whether you call it a sinkhole, a void, a cavern or the blue-light special, the hole that opened in Highway 92 last week is a nightmare for Coastsiders. So, perhaps it doesn’t matter what you call it.
The series of storms that hit the Bay Area over the New Year’s weekend and early this week caused flooding … on the Coastside on Monday and the closure of the Devil’s Slide section of Highway 1 Monday afternoon.
At the end of another hard-working day, Juana and Carolina traveled through the chill and the growing darkness to meet the town’s newspaper editor in the dim, mostly empty La Piazza courtyard just off of Half Moon Bay’s Main Street. Lord knows they had better things to do with their precious…
It’s time to save journalism in a country that literally depends on it. In fact, it’s past time.
How much do you cherish your voting rights? Would you travel to another country to secure free elections? Would you seek citizenship in a foreign land so that you had a say in the governance of your child’s school?
My adult daughter calls this week’s big holiday “Thankstaking.” Anyone who will be sitting down to a big dinner of plenty in the expansive former home of the Ohlone people will be hard-pressed to argue with her. However the holiday has evolved, it hearkens back to a great taking.
Assuming the results hold, it appears incumbent Sue Beckmeyer and first-time candidate Christine Boles have earned seats on the Pacifica City Council. The Nov. 8 general election also brought more money to City Hall in the form of a sales tax increase, but little clarity to the debate over f…
One hundred and fifty years ago this month, a deputy U.S. marshal arrested noted social reformer Susan B. Anthony. The charge? “Wrongfully and unlawfully” voting for a candidate for Congress in Rochester, N.Y. The indictment noted she was “a person of the female sex.” She was ultimately conv…
On Saturday, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier brought her farewell tour to Half Moon Bay. It was as if the Grateful Dead announced its final show would be in a middle school gym on the coast. The only thing missing was the tie-dye and the smell of marijuana in the wind. It was definitely a Bay Area moment.
Like insurance, the Harbor Patrol is merely an expense on the ledger until it’s the only thing that matters. Be that as it may, the San Mateo County Harbor District, which manages and funds the ocean rescue crews, says standing ready, 24 hours a day, for a maritime emergency is an expensive …
On Nov. 8, voters in Pacifica will decide the fate of a tax measure that proponents say is necessary to keep the city safe and beautiful and opponents claim will leave you holding the bag and even open to privacy concerns. In short, Measure Y is either utterly necessary or a terrible choice.
The second California gold rush that was the legalization of cannabis cultivation and the retail sales of that product has gone bust. At least that is the word from many in an industry that is saddled with unsupportable regulation and slow to recover from the travails that buffeted most busi…
The last couple of years have surely been a test for students of all ages. Ditto for parents and school teachers and administrators. They’ve lived through months of fear and trepidation, best efforts to make do with virtual classes, and now an uncertain return that has included confusion ove…
For several years now there have been growing calls for citizen oversight of our Sheriff’s Office and others around the country. It’s such a good idea as to be obvious. Your local police departments need civilian oversight for the same reason the nation’s military needs it: Men with guns and…
After our front-page story last week on proposed changes to the City Council code of conduct, Pacifica City Manager Kevin Woodhouse was kind enough to try and explain where he thought we went wrong.
Happy TDM Week!
The SMC Alert sounded dire and indeed it was. “Extreme heat is straining the energy grid. Conserve energy now to protect public health and safety … Power interruptions may occur unless you take action.”
The Tribune’s Grace Scullion recently wrote about an unfortunate development in modern public meetings, true here in Pacifica and elsewhere: They are growing longer and later. Accompanying her Aug. 24 story was a bar graph showing that Pacifica City Council meetings averaged less than four h…
Observant readers may have noticed that over the last month we’ve begun to report on government meetings differently. That’s intentional, obviously.
There is a lot of talk of the importance of democracy and the republic these days. You can’t turn on a cable television news show without hearing that someone is either saving it or subverting it.
“A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
San Mateo County needs civilian oversight to keep meaningful watch over the Sheriff’s Office. And, with the help of a powerful citizen-led nonprofit and a newly elected sheriff, now is the time to get it.
As if we needed another reason to completely ban fireworks in Pacifica — as the vast majority of Bay Area governments did long ago — consider the vegetation fire that sent plumes of smoke over parts of the coast on July 27. And consider, too, that it could have been much worse.
If one hate crime is a disconcerting anomaly, then what is three?
In today’s newspaper, staff writer Peter Tokofsky looks at a forgotten corner of many public meetings — the consent agenda. It may signal the mundane machinations of government that can’t possibly be of interest to mere taxpayers, but that is often not the case. In fact, sometimes, elected o…
I am writing these words in the hours following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning the 50-year precedent created by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. They will change the mind of no one.
I am writing these words in the hours following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning the 50-year precedent created by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. They will change the mind of no one.
What is it about a rainbow flag that drives some people nuts? Are they just colorphobic? Do they take offense at flags generally? Or is the idea that all people might be welcome — in our communities, at our civic events, in our schoolyards — just too much to take for people who don’t want to…
On Saturday, hundreds of people turned out for a March for Our Lives rally in Pacifica. It was one among hundreds of such events across the country. The movement grew out of a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. Surviving students formed a nonp…
Webster’s Dictionary says, “graduation is the conferring or receipt of an academic degree or diploma marking successful completion of studies” and “a ceremony at which degrees or diplomas are conferred.”
Last week, during one in an ongoing series of meetings local government officials are calling “2022: Our Year of Working Together to End Homelessness,” those doing that work acknowledged that the end of homelessness remains elusive. In fact, by some measures, despite massive effort and recor…
On Monday morning, a neighbor near the senior complex in Half Moon Bay heard an unusual droning noise and looked out the window to see what was going on. What she saw would have been nothing out of the ordinary a couple of years ago. But given the precarious nature of the state’s water resou…
Loosening restrictions. A new, highly transmissible subvariant. So here we are.
If there is one thing we learned from the panic over the future of Pacifica’s Boys and Girls Clubs, it’s how important these facilities are on the coast, across the Peninsula and throughout the United States. The world needs more — not fewer — safe, inclusive spaces for kids of all backgrounds.
For years, decades actually, people around the world have known about the dangers of climate change and sea level rise and largely chosen to ignore our collective fraught future. There are a number of reasons for that willful denial. One of them is that it’s sometimes difficult to picture wh…
Lost in the wake of world events that include an unfathomable war in Ukraine, global supply chain issues that only seem to worsen and galloping inflation on the home front is the fact that the pandemic is entering its third year. You remember the pandemic, don’t you? Masks, vaccines, social …
Seventy years ago, a bow-tie-wearing San Francisco Chronicle reporter named Michael Harris penned a 10-part series he called “Your Secret Government.” His expose on what happened behind closed doors in Bay Area government offices was important but not nearly as important as the law that came…
Now we’re cooking with gas. … But should we?
I am an architect. One of the requirements for obtaining a license is a commitment to public safety; we commit to reporting unsafe issues we see, even those that aren’t related to our work.
Pacifica School District Superintendent Heather Olsen taught kindergarten at Sunset Ridge Elementary School one day last week. Then she led a second-and-third-grade classroom at Cabrillo Elementary School on Thursday and Friday.
There is now broad agreement: Our climate is changing and something must be done about it. Preferably, something somewhere else, that won’t affect me even a little bit.