http://talkabout.hmbreview.com If it's cool, it's on the coast! en-us
We all know how they are achieving savings on the expenditure side--goodbye city workers.

On the revenue side things are more interesting.

First, a side note: One of the things they hammered into us in grad school was never to trust "the experts." Just being an accountant, a lawyer, or a judge, doesn't make you infallible. And most important, never forget--their interests are not necessarily aligned with yours.

A small example in the HMB budget is this, on page A6:

"One of the events held annually in Half Moon Bay that helps enhance economic growth is the Pumpkin Festival, sponsored by the Half Moon Bay Beautification Committee. The Festival is attended by more than 250,000 people each year in mid-October. Net proceeds are used for various City beautification projects, including the maintenance of Main Street. "

This is written by a "numbers person"--an expert with accounting--and yet the 250,000 people attending the Pumpkin Festival claim gets through. It is clearly wrong, undeniable wrong, wrong on its face, and wrong by a huge margin. I would guess that this number is 225,000 too high--an error of one thousand percent.

Keep that in mind when you are thinking about deferring to "the experts."

Now, on the revenue side, HMB gets about 1/3 or more of its budget from TOT--from hotels, essentially. From tourists.

Here's the historical TOT that HMB has received:

2004-05: $2,438,333
2005-06: $2,734,013
2006-07: $2,982,956
2007-08: $3,343,020
2008-09: $3,776,000

For the next budget they are projecting a increase similar to those in the past. The recession, deep as it is, doesn't seem reflected in these numbers.

2009-10: $4,011,000

Going forward the budget makes additional projections. Here are the numbers:

2010-11: $4,051,505
2011-12: $4,092,020
2012-13: $4,173,860
2013-14: $4,257,338

Up and up and up it goes. Weirdly, the increases *after* the recession are much smaller than the increases *during* the recession. That seems odd. Does it make sense?

It sure looks to me that they make these crazy claims about increases during the recession and then have to throttle back the long-term forecast lest the numbers get silly-high.

For contrast, here is a link to a chart that shows hotel occupancy rates since 2001:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SdTV734hZ-I/AAAAAAAAE9g/GqcQFMlN8Z4/s1600-h/HotelOccupancyRateApr22009.jpg

As you can see, the occupancy rates have been in gradual decline since 2006 and have taken a steep dive at the end of 2007. Here is the post where the chart came from:

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/07/hotel-revpar-off-174.html

This doesn't seem to match the projections that the City has made at all. Anecdotal evidence and press reports also indicate that the local hotels are doing quite poorly. Again, a disconnect from the City's rosy budget forecast.

I know they are trying the paint the City as financially healthy in order to get those bonds off the ground--but will HMB really be able to afford the payment?

Will they have to raise taxes to pay for the bond? Will the bond put the City on the very edge of bankruptcy?

--Darin]]> Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:39:58 PDT    
Mark Timmons
El Granada]]> Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:32:12 PDT     Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:23:40 PDT     Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:52:10 PDT     Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:49:36 PDT     We all have much to be proud of & thankful for!!!
Take care of yourself & each other!
Cheers...]]> Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:40:59 PDT     Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:22:20 PDT    
As readers of TalkAbout know, George Muteff and Brian Ginna have taken every opportunity to vilify HMB City Council member Jim Grady these past few years.

They miss no opportunity for attack or innuendo. They start thread after thread, making him the boogeyman for all that is wrong with HMB.

This is all fun to read, the usual small-town dirty politics, but then a thought occurs: Why Grady?

Grady, as you know, is in a minority of one on the City Council. He is alone, powerless. He is kept in the dark by Naomi and the others in the majority on the Council. Votes at the Council are either 5-0 (with Grady joining the majority) or 4-1 with Grady opposing the majority. His vote, in the end, matters not in the slightest.

If Grady would have vanished two years ago nothing would have changed. The City Council would still have made the same decisions regarding Beachwood and all other matters.

So why the intense focus on Grady, with never a word said about any of the other Council members?

In traditional political strategy you do this sort of thing as a distraction, to keep the public's attention focused on some boogeyman and away from the issues you really care about.

In the Middle East, for example, governments often encourage anti-USA sentiment as a way of distracting the population from the fact that the ruling family is corrupt, etc.

So why the constant attack by George and Brian upon powerless Grady?

What do they gain from it?

--Darin]]> Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:00:21 PDT     Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:38:56 PDT     Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:28:26 PDT     Do the legislators and their staff get vouchers? They are, after all, the ones responsible for passing a balanced budget by June 30 of each and every year. So what happens when they don't?
Are they at all incentivized to do their job? Do they pay their mortgages, phone bills and more with these vouchers like they expect others to do? Will they be without a paycheck until October, like the people they do business with?
An Associated Press piece, titled "IOUs spell uncertainty for Calif. small businesses", http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090703/ap_on_re_us/us_california_budget_ious , paints a grim picture for those doing business with the State but doesn't talk about the legislators themselves.
Anyone know exactly how this will work and who's back this resides on? How will we feel the pinch here? Could you go three months with a promise to get paid?]]> Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:25:42 PDT     Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:26:27 PDT     It began innocently enough, with me sitting in press row at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., at the recently completed USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. The five reporters sitting in my area were having a conversation about eventual champion Dwight Phillips. I, as the only American reporter close by, was brought into the conversation.
I was asked by one of the reporters why Phillips wasn’t at a press conference the day before the meet started. I said that maybe he was unavailable, didn’t get to Eugene by the time of the press conference or something else. The next question thrown my way was why there’s not much written about Phillips though he has the leading mark in the world. I said that the American media tends not to care about track and field unless it’s an Olympic year. There were more American media at the NFL combines in Indianapolis in February than at the meet this year.
I added that’s a shame because there are a lot of great stories, including Stephanie Brown Trafton. The surprise winner in the discus at last year’s Olympics, Trafton won her first national title this year. During her post-meet press conference, she mentioned that her family banned her from having corndogs, her favorite food, unless she won the national title. As soon as she got through with the interview and drug testing, it was off to search for a corndog.
Those European reporters, from Finland, Italy, Germany, Spain and France looked at me befuddled, with the same thought: what’s a corndog?
Thanks to a Google search, I told them what goes in a corndog and how it’s made. There were pictures, also. One reporter said it didn't look all that good. I was all set to buy the five a corndog. Sadly, I could not find a spot in Eugene that sold corndogs.
I don’t know if Trafton got her corndog either.
But, as Jeff Guttormsen, coach of the Half Moon Bay Waves 16-and-under softball team, told me a few days later, I should have invited the five to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. They are sure to see the corndog stand there.

]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:13:23 PDT    


My favorite quote from Richard Oshen:

"I think their record supports how they [Coastal Commission] don't care for individuals who happen to have a home or land in a particular area. And yet, it's funny that [Commissioner] Sara Wan and [the commission's Executive Director] Peter Douglas own property."

Is that guy off his meds? Seriously. What does property ownership by Sara Wan and Peter Douglas have to do with enforcing the Coastal Act or Peg and Dan's case?

I think the second commenter is right -- What kind of an attorney would bring a case like this where there is no hope of victory?

I'm beginning to feel sorry for that couple.]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:12:12 PDT    
CVS requests your name, address, home phone, e-mail, sex, date of birth, and ages of children in order to receive sale prices that Longs used to, and most of their competitors still do, provide automatically. They will then presumably record your every purchase — be it shampoo, a bottle of wine or prescription medication — and do with it what they will, subject only to some of the weakest protection policies, both professed and practiced, possible.

They say they will “never give or sell any specific information about you to any manufacturers or direct marketers”, but seemingly can do so to any entity that calls itself something else. They give you no opportunity to “opt out”, or prevent data use by any third party, which are among the many privacy protections Consumer Reports and other untainted sources suggest we all employ. (See “Consumer Reports Investigation Warns Your Privacy Is For Sale”, http://www.consumersunion.org/pub/core_financial_services/004055.html.)

Even more serious, however, is CVS’s corporate record of mistreating confidential health and financial information in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as charged by both the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, prior to a $2.25 million settlement earlier this year. (See the FTC website for a Feb. 18, 2009 release, with what are to me very troubling details: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/02/cvs.shtm.)

We long-time coastside residents have seen our share of annoying-to-unfair practices perpetrated by purveyors on local shoppers, often due to limited competition (e.g., Safeway after Albertsons closed). Fortunately, CVS has some nearby competitors, both in HMB and Pacifica, without such obvious privacy problems, and concerned consumers should be visiting them instead.
]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:11:41 PDT     Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:53:38 PDT     Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:37:21 PDT    
http://www.sanmateocourt.org/grandjury/2008/advisory_letter.pdf (takes you to a pdf copy of the letter).

http://www.sanmateocourt.org/director.php?filename=./grandjury/2008/index.php takes you to the GJ reports for this year (interesting reading).

One finding in the advisory letter is of local interest (but not surprising or little known):

5) During the last 40 years, only one supervisor was elected from the coastal area of the County.

I am not sure how changing to district elections would help the coast since we already seem to have trouble getting people to run for local office...]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:25:22 PDT    
I was curious if you had contacted Tres Amigos to ask them about my claim? The company that they signed the contract with is Great American Opportunities and thier number is 800-881-5273 if you would like to verify their breaching of the contract! This needs to be talked about and Tres needs to be called on their actions, as they get major support from the whole coastside community and to pull this it realy not cool at all, especially when it was to support Cunha and kids. This kind of action might cause some residents who would normally buy the card next year to help to support Cunha to think twice? Thinking that they will have to possibly deal with the hassle or embarrasment again next year with the local merchants who sign contract to participate in the fundraiser, not honoring them, they may not help out and buy cards? Please do us all a favor and check into this.

Sincerely,

John]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:20:43 PDT     Wednesday's Review. In fact you have to look at the bottom of the Current's Front Page
to find out that there will be a Parade on the 4th of July. Where is the RED, WHITE and BLUE.]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:04:33 PDT     Today, July 2, 8:20 am, a 17' boat called CABO 204 (FC 6106 NA) loaded with three Asian males, 1 Asian female and three! (3) children is fishing just outside the surf exactly the same spot where last week's boat was overturned.
Question: Is there any way to educate people how to load and operate a boat safely? Like you have with your automobile?
This is stressful to watch.]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:24:33 PDT     Jammie
Don't Anybody Believe In Charity In These Hard Times.]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:46:45 PDT     Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:35:43 PDT    
Keenan is in the process of transferring the 90+ connections now to another one of his properties. Mayor Muller says, "Somebody missed the boat on it. It was a very important factor that nobody noticed until it was too late."

Here's the link: http://www.hmbreview.com/articles/2009/07/01/news/doc4a4bcc3812797715774250.txt

The City Council has again and again demonstrated its political naivete and the incompetence of its new legal council. The cheerleaders here on TalkAbout just keep on cheerleading.

When will the people decide that they've had enough?

--Darin]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:45:56 PDT    
“Paul Keel, superintendent for the California State Parks San Mateo County Coast Sector, said there are warning signs up and down the beach”

I live right across from Montara State Beach and there are signs for the sheer cliffs but not for the dangerous water and DO NOT SWIM signs NEED to go up!!

Do you know where I can start a petition for this??? This incident was HORRIBLE and I spoke extensively to the couple
who brought Angie, the mother, from the water and gave her mouth to mouth while waiting a significant time for rescue aid to arrive.

Unsung heroes that truly risked THEIR lives to pull her from the water after helping the other girls back to safety. The girls then sat there
and watched this woman give mouth to mouth for this 10-15 minutes while crying hysterically and shrieking about the 5 year old still being in the water.

This is a horrible situation….and in the last 10 years there have been at least 3 other deaths that occurred from that shore at Montara Beach(not to mention the amount of dogs that have been taken out).

Please help inform me of where action can be taken so that I can start to petition this!!

-Mary Pat Dempsey-Frank


]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:45:26 PDT