Civic Duty vs Whistling in the Dark

Posted on by Brenda under Musings, Pete's Harbor

I’m beginning to think this blog is never going to find its way back to the realities of Sailing Mahdee! This week, I took the time to sit down and make comments on the 1200 page EIR package for the proposed development project at Pete’s Harbor. The process took more effort than expected because I was unfamiliar with the particulars of the Redwood City General Plan–another 1000 pages of plan, appendices, comments, it’s own EIR, addendum, and errata. Gracious! The real civic duty for the citizens of Redwood City includes a heavy load of reading, for sure.

What I’m not quite sure of is why I bothered–except I remember the days of being on the other side of the table when I worked for a government agency that did real public outreach and really did care about what all the stakeholders had to say. Silly me.

You must have some background: I’m one of the people who was happily drinking the Kool-Aid of reinventing government (at the Federal level, at least) in 1997. Since we moved aboard the boat, I must admit I traded in my hard copy of the simple little book The Blair House Papers that said so much, for an e-book version that took up less space aboard.

After sitting through 5 hours of a planning commission meeting–much of it on unrelated projects–I ultimately endured the agony of listening to the landowner’s lawyer twist a knife of hurtful and calculatedly defaming comments in the back of the live-aboard tenants of the marina.

Today I feel like slapping myself and saying “wake up, you’re back in the purgatory of small town politics!”

How could I forget? It’s been too long, now I remember what I’ve always hated about small towns: the impacts of group-think and cronyism in small town politics. Yes, I know that the same risks exist at county, state, and national levels here in the USA. It’s just more sophisticated the further up the power chain you get. Easier to ignore. Even a Pollyanna like me can connect the dots at this simple, small town level. I’d rather be whistling in the dark, but once you’ve shined a flashlight on the face of that darkness, it’s hard to go back to sleep.

RWC Planning Commission Meeting

Posted on by Brenda under Pete's Harbor

We were a bit in shock after the RWC Planning Commission meeting. Amazing stall tactics with a filibuster discussion of whether the RWC Costco should be allowed to increase their gas pumps by one island or two. Three hours–yes–three whole hours of that…I was beginning to think that it is possible for the RWCPC to consider things in depth, after all, they spent 3 hours on something seemingly pretty straightforward. Then, they showed us that no, they were just stalling. The lengthy Costco discussion created a situation in which the Pete’s Harbor project wasn’t even starting discussion until something like 10:30 pm. The PC decided that they’d hear the presentation of the project and EIR and only public comments from those who couldn’t attend the next PC meeting (Oct 30th).

We listened to a high level presentation by staff liaison Blake Lyon, and then the expected supporting statement from the land owner Uccelli turned into a very strange monologue about the tenants of Pete’s Harbor rather than the expected benefits of the project to the RWC. While puzzling over that, we then were subjected to a monologue by Uccelli’s lawyer which meandered but one intent was to discredit liveaboard boaters. When much of the public present unconsciously and collectively gasped at one point, the PC Chair admonished the public that there would be no such outbursts or he’d just shut down the meeting. The developer did get to give a high level presentation but no serious discussion of the EIR or additional unmitigated impacts was had. A few people who couldn’t be at the Oct 30th PC meeting made 3 minute public comment. Most were friends of the land owner Uccelli and a couple were interested public in support of keeping Pete’s Harbor, the landmark that it is, here in some way. The rest of the public comments will be heard on October 30th, 2012. I’ve attached a .pdf (link here) of the lengthy letter that we gave to the RWC PC before the meeting. We were unable to comment so didn’t actually present the single thing we were most interested in–the unmitigated impact to boaters of RWC because the slip situation has changed significantly since the original 2003 EIR was performed.

The next RWC PC meeting is Oct 30th and we’ll certainly be writing about it at that time.

Dock Walking

Posted on by Brenda under Pete's Harbor, photos

If you’re a boater, do you remember the days before you had a boat? I do. We knew we wanted to own a sailboat someday. We knew we wanted something we could live aboard and sail the world’s oceans. So like thousands of other dreamers, we spent our fair share of time dock walking. “Look, there’s a public marina!” back in the days before they were all gated and locked.

If someone were dock walking at Pete’s Harbor yesterday evening, this is what they’d have seen near Mahdee:

David carrying groceries down to the boat–