May 13, 1998

I'm proud to be part of "the media" today

I dropped in on an ad hoc meeting of the MidPeninsula Regional Open Space District the other evening in Half Moon Bay. They can't have official meetings outside district boundaries, so only a minority of the board was present, along with the PR man and a couple of other staffers, including district lawyer Sue Schectman of Pacifica. Though Coastside resident Nancy Maule was there half an hour before the start of the meeting, she was one of the last speakers. Several of the early speakers were quite concerned with the recent use or threat of the use of eminent domain by the district. The subject was played down by staff and board members.

Eminent domain has been threatened or used very seldom, we were told. Of course it need not be. Just the threat of eminent domain concentrates the minds of victim landowners wonderfully. If a government agency can grab your land for its evaluation of fair market value, perhaps it's best to take what's offered rather than spend a lot of money and still lose.

Californios of the 19th century had the law on their side. (Their huge Mexican landgrants made them California's largest landowners). The other side had better lawyers. By 1875, 13 years after Francisco Sanchez died, Rancho San Pedro was owned by bankers like the Tobins and lawyers like George Sharp.

A few of the meeting's speakers got under my skin. They criticized the media and Supervisor Mike Nevin for "negative" comments when the district tried to grab the Skyline property of a group of Orthodox nuns. I hadn't planned to speak, but I am a reactor, after all.

I got up to praise the media. As far as I know I was the first to write in sympathy with the nuns, in this column, but I was delighted to see editorials in the SF Chronicle and the San Mateo Times. Rarely has justice been better served than this reaction by the media. It set the stage for a compromise.

While a few folks from Montara and El Granada may want to see the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District expand almost to the south border of Pacifica, I suggest the district stay within the swollen 66 square miles it already controls. I haven't made the detailed examination of San Mateo County, Santa Clara County and Santa Cruz County I once made of Pacifica. I discovered fully half Pacifica is government owned open space, roads and streets. If I added up district lands, city lands, San Francisco watershed, state, county and federal holdings, beaches and parks, a very large portion of the three counties is likewise unavailable for homes and farms.

Every parcel withdrawn from the land market makes it more expensive to buy a house. It's no coincidence comparable homes in Sonoma County cost little more than half the price in Pacifica. So much land has been withdrawn from the available pool in the bay counties some are forced to commute from Tracy and Modesto. It's an artificial shortage. Some of the few houses being built in Pacifica sell so high Bill Clinton could barely afford them, if he wasn't getting free rent in the White House.

Paul Azevedo can be reached via e-mail at reactor@wenet.net