Perhaps more politically savvy Washington watchers were not surprised by U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier’s announcement last week that she would not run again, this time for an eighth term representing California’s 14th Congressional District in the House of Representatives. The rest of us were rattled.
I recently had a wide-ranging discussion with an elected official on the coast that turned to the costs associated with mitigating climate change. He suggested that, while virtually all of us see the need to turn off the gas (so to speak) before we all bake (as a figure of speech), few of us…
Last week, when the Biden Administration announced it was invoking emergency rules to force large employers to mandate vaccinations for their employees, some industry “leaders” proved that they weren’t really leaders at all. Like, for instance, David French, senior vice president of the Nati…
The recent atmospheric river effectively snuffed out wildfire season, and many are breathing a sigh of relief. While wildfires burned 2.5 million acres of California this year, that is nearly 40 percent less than the year before. Take heart while you can. Given the trend line, which shows ev…
School principals are like baseball umpires. When you have good ones, sometimes you don’t even know they are on the job.
At this writing, the Estrada Fire — the latest wildland fire turned social media hashtag — had burned about 150 acres, causing an anxious weekend for residents along the Santa Cruz-Santa Clara county border. First there was smoke. Then the sound of sirens pouring in from across the state. Th…
Since 1898, the Half Moon Bay Review has provided the community with local news. With this week’s paper we are kicking off our big subscription drive, and in doing so, we will be doubling the Review’s circulation. This is important to us because we want this community to be more engaged with…
It seems that virtually every school district in the Bay Area is either providing housing for teachers or considering doing so in an effort to retain qualified staff that increasingly can’t afford prevailing market rates.
We’d like to take a point of privilege to address legislation of particular importance to news reporters like those at the Tribune and across the state. Two bills are on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk now.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, fresh from what he surely considers a mandate, wasted no time to signal his support for creating more affordable housing. Now we see what happens.
“You don't just pick up cash that belongs to your employer, pass it around, spend it as you see fit, and not document the spending.”
We rule followers have had it relatively easy this pandemic. We’ve waited, breathlessly, for the next opportunity to do the right thing by staying inside, wearing a mask and getting vaccinated. The next point of order, it may seem, would be to line up dutifully for our booster shots on the m…
At last check, just over half of Americans are vaccinated against the potentially lethal effects of COVID-19. The numbers are better for California (about 60 percent) and much better in San Mateo County, where 80 percent of people over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated with one of three vac…
If not for deadly wildfires blackening some of California’s most beloved landscapes and a novel coronavirus still coursing through our communities, the state’s top existential challenge would be housing. Specifically, how to build more of it.
Keith Mangold is a man on a mission to save El Granada from wildfires no one thought possible when he moved to town nearly 40 years ago. In fact, few contemplated unchecked fire burning through the canopy of eucalyptus even five years ago. Yet today everyone acknowledges the danger, even as …
The city of Half Moon Bay is in the process of planning for a corporation yard at the end of Stone Pine Road. Actually, it already exists and you can catch glimpses of it as you travel in and out of town on Highway 92. At the moment, it consists of an old ranch house and some storage contain…
More than 78 percent of the credentialed staff at Cabrillo Unified School District is white. Less than 15 percent of staff is Latino. There are no Black teachers. Meanwhile, only 41 percent of the student body is Caucasian. The majority of students are Latino with a sprinkling of every other…
Updated: 9:00am, August 11, 2021.
By now, conquering seemingly unconquerable medical challenges by realizing the promise of technology might seem like old hat to Coastsider Gary Selnow. After all, he’s aided doctors in war-torn regions like Iraq and Kosovo and brought medical miracles to remote parts of the Amazon. But even …
People often say that their loved ones don’t really die, that they live on in our hearts, that their spirits continue to guide us forever. Friends and family of Ken Paul Lozada, who died at the age of 89 last month in Half Moon Bay, aren’t merely mouthing such spirituality expected in grief,…
A couple years ago, wise leaders of the Granada Community Services District voted to help skateboarders move their unregulated (and thoroughly awesome) jetty ramp from Caltrans right of way onto district property on the Burnham Strip. In so doing, the district earned a lot of goodwill and di…
Young people who play organized sports are healthier, all things considered, than their more sedentary peers. They form lasting friendships and learn to deal with adversity in productive ways. They become time management experts out of necessity. Young athletes build confidence and good habi…
There are times when government largess is appropriate. In the midst of a life-threatening pandemic, when millions of Americans are put out of work without warning, programs like the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which distributed $800 billion to nearly a million American businesses, …
When California extended the state’s eviction moratorium through September, lawmakers were acknowledging both process problems getting federal money where it’s needed as well as the scope of an economic problem that is both personal and societal.
Many of us were taught that America gained its independence on July 4, 1776. That is the day delegates from the 13 original Colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with …
Ready or not, California is open once more.
June is Pride Month, and CoastPride kicked it off in a big way on June 1 with the grand opening and official ribbon-cutting of its new community center in downtown Half Moon Bay.
With dozens of special districts, boards and committees stretching from Pacifica to Pescadero, there’s no shortage of ways to get involved in local government. But the same handful of people tend to show up to meetings to advocate for or against the issues of the day. The biggest decisions a…
Remember when it was nearly impossible to get a COVID-19 test, let alone a vaccine? Just weeks ago, it was a mad dash. Now, they’re in every local pharmacy and will even be offered at the county fair.
Last week we posted our story about Half Moon Bay City Councilman Joaquin Jimenez’s May 23 encounter with San Mateo County Sheriff’s deputies. I knew it would cause a ruckus. That’s because your opinion of what went down likely depends on your perspective. And your perspective is influenced …
Last week, a decomposing gray whale washed up on Pacifica State Beach. A week earlier, beachgoers were shocked by a similar sight at Half Moon Bay’s Francis State Beach. There have now been a dozen dead whales on Bay Area beaches so far this year. Unfortunately, that may be just the tip of t…
Knowing how to protect yourself and others in the time of COVID-19 has been, from the beginning, a matter of following the experts’ best guess, and that hasn’t changed after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surprised us by lifting the mask rules in most settings.
This won’t be the year that we turn on the faucet in our homes and find that nothing comes out. But it may be the year we contemplate that day. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider the machinations of various local, state and national agencies in the weeks before the long, hot and very dry summer:
It’s not every day an entire community has the opportunity to change so much for the better all at one time. Thursday is such a day.
Recently, the San Mateo County Libraries finished a project that at first seemed without end: Digitizing decades worth of Coastside history. You can now call up 100 years of Half Moon Bay Review newspapers and another 13 years of Coastside Comets — a newspaper that for a time ran alongside t…
A half-dozen top officials from San Mateo County’s law enforcement community gathered virtually on Monday afternoon to answer questions from Coastsiders in a forum organized by La Honda Indivisible, a local chapter of a national social justice organization. They dedicated an hour and a half …
Is there a better word in the English language, one with more positive connotations, than “library”?
The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office is among hundreds of public agencies that have made use of controversial facial recognition software, and, until now, it hasn’t bothered to mention it. Until we asked, the Sheriff’s Office had declined to answer questions about who in the department had …
Pity 50-something Coastsiders. They are old enough to qualify for a coronavirus vaccine, but they might not live long enough to actually find one.
Long about the 2-hour, 6-minute mark of the city of Half Moon Bay’s “2021 Priority Setting Session” last week, Deborah Penrose unmuted herself, both literally and figuratively. The always amiable, usually amenable, retired physician had made a diagnosis and the prognosis for this meeting was…
We are learning again that hate is not always Black and white.
Last week, I met a Pacifica resident as she was leaving Senior Coastsiders in Half Moon Bay having gotten the second dose of her vaccine. After sleeping late on that Thursday morning, something she normally doesn’t do, she got a message from her daughter urging her to get in the car and driv…
Farm Day. Dream Machines. Pumpkin Festival. Fish and Fleet. Fog Fest. Most of the biggest events of the Coastside calendar have “gone viral,” which is to say they are gone due to the virus. Again.
“Think ahead 10 or 15 years and ask yourself, what proportion of the activity called ‘learning’ will be located in the institution called ‘school’?”
The loss of the Andreotti barn in Half Moon Bay was a loss for the family, of course, but it was felt across the city and beyond. Many of us saw that barn as more than a farmstand on the way to the beach.
As we slowly edge our way through this pandemic, it’s a good time to remind ourselves that we need to be patient with each other, and especially patient with those we do business with here on the Coastside. Decreased hours, shoestring staffs — we’re all trying to get by, to make do.
New homes in Half Moon Bay must be constructed to accommodate solar power. Before long, city residents may be asked to phase out their natural gas appliances — water heaters, stovetops and so on — in favor of cleaner electric alternatives. And California is mandating that all cars sold in th…
There is growing pressure on public school systems to open their classroom doors and let students inside facilities that have been shuttered for most of the last year. That pressure will only increase as case rates fall heading out of winter. Very soon, school employees are going to have to …
Good news organizations exist as part of a flourishing, elaborate ecosystem. Think of a tree, and journalism as just one branch. It is rooted in community and requires the figurative sunlight of an open government. It grows as part of a forest of successful local enterprises — businesses, no…
We knew this was coming. The vaccine, that is. And we knew just who needed saving. Latinos make up 42 percent of COVID-19 cases despite only comprising 24 percent of the population, and a whopping 92 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the county are among those 60 or older.
