Voice of the Coast

A regular feature that examines editorial bias in the Review, both on and off the editorial page.

When Half Moon Bay’s 22-acre community park acquisition was announced a year ago, the Review hailed it as a “forward-thinking move,” helpfully informing its readers that “land doesn’t grow on trees,” and it was “a good investment.” After all, who isn’t in favor of community parks?

Well, some of the park’s Cypress Cove neighbors, it turned out. Obligingly, the Review suddenly discovered a city council conspiracy to build a noisy, sprawling, trafficjammed sports complex. The neighbors grabbed the ball and ran, and the Review provided play-by-play coverage.

Let’s have a look at the history of the Great Park Conspiracy of 2004.

At a city council meeting on October 19, 2004, Parks and Recreation Director Rollie Wright proposed to apply for two time-sensitive state grants using place-holder language and elements from an earlier grant application to speed the process, and modifying them after the grants were approved.

After public discussion, the council approved Wright’s proposal, as the Review reported a week later.

In early January, City Manager Debra Ryan again explained to the first meeting of the citizens’ park advisory committee that the grant applications had used place-holder language in order to meet the December 10 deadline.

Two weeks after Ryan’s appearance, and despite its own October story, the Review published a front-page article on January 19 with the dramatic headline, “Is park plan already in place?”, along with an editorial excitedly “exposing” the grant applications as a newly-discovered “fact” that the council had hidden from public view.

The Review’s headline baldly suggested that the city had a secret plan for the park, making a sham of the 31-person park advisory committee. A month before the first committee meeting, the Review breathlessly related, the city had submitted a grant application “that appears to detail the future park’s amenities,” and that “most weren’t aware the city authored any type of plan at all, and certainly not one that was submitted to the state for review.”

Having made the front-page accusations, the article went on to bury on page 13 the city officials’ repeated explanation: that the plans could be amended, that if the state wouldn’t go along, they’d forego the grants as a funding source, and emphasizing that the citizens would make the decisions about the park elements.

But if the headline merely alarmed its readers, the Review’s editorial drove home the point: “Meanwhile City Council — unknown to everyone — including some of its own members — hires an architect as part of a detailed grant application that includes very specific plans for the park. And no one knows . . . get it?” (emphasis theirs)

Months later, on Sept 14, 2005, the Review now admits, “It is now obvious the city never planned to construct such palaces of recreation.” (emphasis added)

Why the turnaround?

Damage to the incumbents done, the Review dropped the neighbors like a hot rock, in an editorial telling them to leave the lawyers out of it. The Review’s strategy shift happens to coincide with the challenger candidates’ view that the park lacks enough “active sports” facilities for kids, a view that goes directly against the concerns of the neighbors. Flip, flop.

As the Review, fresh from a round of pothole digging, disingenuously observed in its September editorial, “It would be no exaggeration to say that it has been a bumpy ride.”

To answer our own question: a park is not a park when it’s made a political football. That’s a shame when, for the first time in Half Moon Bay history, our city council has brought us a real community park.