HMB Review, 12/19/01
Club, school in the hands of the school board

Dear editor:

On Saturday I saw school board president Ken Jones erecting a large sign on the Wavecrest Village property west of Highway 1. The sign asks where the middle school, Boys and Girls club, and ball fields are.

Foregoing, for the moment, the amusing implications of seeing such an august dignitary erecting illegal signs on someone else's property, the text of the sign also had its humorous side. After all, who better to ask than Mr Jones himself where the middle school is?

The sign was the handiwork of a group that currently calls itself Coastsiders for Quality Living. Apparently, one of the brighter lights in the organization must have figured out that the question was just as pertinent to them as to anyone else so, later, an additional sign was appended with the words "Ask Ferreira!"

Gee whiz, I think that's me. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline Mr. Jones' generous and unexpected display of humility because I still think he's the one most qualified to answer the question.

My reasoning is based on the following paragraph taken from the official Coastal Commission transcript of the June 14 Wavecrest Village project hearing in Los Angeles. The statement is made to the commission by commission staff member Chris Kern, who has handled the project since its appeal more than two years ago:

"We encouraged, or suggested to the applicants quite a long time ago that one way that they could move forward on the Boys and Girls Club and the schools projects on a faster track than the rest of the development would be to separate those developments into different permits. But the applicant chose not to pursue that option and submitted this as a single permit application. On that basis, we don't feel that we have the ability to separate them out at this point." "Quite a long time ago" says a lot, doesn't it? In other words, Mr. Jones et al had the solution in their hands and chose not to take it. Instead, they chose to leave their projects bundled with the 269 single-family homes, 165,000 square feet of commercial space with 692 parking spaces, and another signalized intersection on Highway 1 that comprise the controversial Wavecrest Village tract.

All that said, if Mr. Jones and his colleagues genuinely believe in the "quality living" their group extols, I'd like to urge them to remove the sign. In addition to the garbled message, it really is an eyesore.

Mike Ferreira
Half Moon Bay