Voice of the Coast

Everyone who runs for City Council has Half Moon Bay’s best interests at heart. The problem is that different people have different ideas about what is best for Half Moon Bay.

In the upcoming November election, there are six Council candidates for three seats. And we at the League for Coastside Protection feel that there are striking differences between the candidates.

There are two distinct visions, two different philosophies, for doing what is best for Half Moon Bay. One of those philosophies is to make Half Moon Bay grow quickly — expand its infrastructure, and encourage large developers to build.

The other philosophy, the vision shared by the League and three Council candidates, is to help Half Moon Bay grow while maintaining its special character — its beauty, and its farming, fishing, small-town character.

The three candidates who share this vision are Mike Ferreira, Jim Grady and Steve Skinner.

This election is a vital one. It will decide where Half Moon Bay will head in the next decade, and how fast it will get there.

One philosophy toward growth is to court developers, to encourage large developments in town, so that those developers will provide essential services to the city of Half Moon Bay.

But we believe that the growth of Half Moon Bay should be decided by what makes the most sense for the town — not decided by what snazzy deal can be cut with developers. You don’t get something for nothing, and the cost of large developments is in the huge number of cars on the highway, the higher cost of more children in the school district, the cost of providing services like sewer and water and roads to all of those new people.

Half Moon Bay has the highest rate of growth in San Mateo County in the past 10 years. That huge increase in development was one of the reasons that residents here voted in the current Council, which has diligently worked to undo the damage of all of those approvals of all of those large residential home subdivisions.

That high rate of growth also prompted the citizens of Half Moon Bay to pass two growth measures, the first limiting residential growth to 3 percent (Measure A) and the second limiting residential growth even more, to 1 percent (Measure D).

However, right before the first election, the one for Measure A, the City Council approved the building of 560 homes.

At one point, the 217-home Wavecrest subdivision was going to actually have 750 homes. At one point, the 63-home Pacific Ridge subdivision was set at 213 homes. There’s the 50 homes of the Carter Hill subdivision, the 85 homes of the Beechwood subdivision. All of these tracts of homes were approved by previous Councils, and the current Council has been working to make those numbers more manageable – more in keeping with the slower growth demanded by Half Moon Bay voters.

Think about it: Half Moon Bay has had the highest rate of growth in San Mateo County in the past 10 years — and that’s not counting all of those homes that were approved 10 years ago and not yet built.

That “highest rate of growth” we’ve had in the past decade doesn’t include Wavecrest, or Pacific Ridge, or Carter Hill, or Beechwood.

Think where we’d be as a town right now if, on top of that highest rate of growth, we also had all of those homes that were initially approved, if we had those 560 homes passed right before Measure A, if we also had 750 homes at Wavecrest, as originally planned.

That’s more than 1,300 new homes. Line up the cars from those 1,300 homes and you get about seven miles worth of cars. And those 1,300 homes — that’s on top of what is already the highest growth rate in the county.

And that’s one vision of Half Moon Bay. It’s just not our vision.

We at the League for Coastside Protection would like to urge you to vote to re-elect Mayor Jim Grady and City Council member Mike Ferreira, and to elect Steve Skinner.