Growing the Beaches

These videos document a managed retreat and renourishment project at Ventura’s C-Street beach. This project serves as an example for the San Mateo County coast.

Rock the Block

The San Mateo County Harbor District at Rock the Block in downtown Half Moon Bay.

The blue and white balloons were a big success. Gary and Jacob Rocked the Block.

Boaters fish for harbor wifi

Wi the Fi not?

Mark Noack of the Half Moon Bay Review reported the following:

For many Pillar Point fishermen, the smartphone and laptop are becoming as indispensable for the job as the traditional hook and bait...The communication needs of local fishermen have become a top issue for the San Mateo County Harbor District as it considers installing wireless Internet around the docks. Commissioner Sabrina Brennan is pressing the idea. She says commercial fishermen urged her to make Wi-Fi a priority when she took office.

“In order to run their business, they need to be on their iPad or computers to sell their fish,” she said. “Any active commercial fisherman, I think, would be using it. All the fishermen I know are online.”

Making the case for expanding Internet connectivity, Brennan pointed out the service is already freely offered at other harbors around the Bay Area. That day could come soon when boat owners planning out a voyage decide to bypass Pillar Point simply because it doesn’t have a strong or free Internet connection, she said.

“For convenience, it’d be great to have some kind of free service,” commercial fisherman Jim Anderson said.

Oath of Office Ceremony

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday and Presidents Obama's second inauguration I read from "Strength to Love" before taking the Oath of Office.

The reading included a short section from Coretta Scott King's Forward written in 1981 and two sections from an MLK sermon in chapter three, On being a good neighbor.

Forward: by Coretta Scott King

This book best explains the central element of Martin luther King, Jr.'s philosophy of nonviolence...In his sermon "The man who was a fool" he said, "All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.  I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."

Martin Luther King Jr.'s theological belief in the interdependence of all life inevitably led to methods for social change that dignified the humanity of the social change advocate as well as his adversary.  "Christ gave us the goals," he would often say, "and Mahatma Gandhi provided the tactics."

Chapter Three: On being a good neighbor (page 37-38)

In our nation today a mighty struggle is taking place. It is a struggle to conquer the reign of an evil monster called segregation and its inseparable twin called discrimination—a monster that has wandered through this land for well-nigh one hundred years, stripping millions of people of their sense of dignity and robbing them of their birthright of freedom.

Let us never succumb to the temptation of believing that legislation and judicial decrees play only minor roles in solving this problem.  Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless. The habits, if not the hearts, of people have been and are being altered every day by legislative acts, judicial decisions, and executive orders. Let us not be misled by those who argue that segregation cannot be ended by the force of law.

A vigorous enforcement of civil rights law will bring an end to segregated public facilities which are barriers to a truly desegregated society, but it cannot bring an end to fears, prejudice, pride, and irrationality, which are the barriers to a truly integrated society. These dark and demonic responses will be removed only as men and women are possessed by the invisible, inner law which etches on their hearts the conviction that all men are brothers and sisters and that love is mankind's most potent weapon for personal and social transformation. True integration will be achieved by true neighbors who are willingly obedient to unenforceable obligations.

More that ever before, my friends, men and women of all races and nations are today challenged to be neighborly.

John Green . Staff Photojournalist . Bay Area News Group

Swearing-In Video

I love the ocean. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I went to New Orleans to help. That's when I decided to run for a seat on the Harbor Commission. It's very important to me that we do a better job protecting our shore here in California than was done on the Gulf Coast.

If you eat seafood, it may have come from Pillar Point Harbor. To travel to the East Bay, you can take a ferry from Oyster Point to Oakland. The Harbor District is a key part of providing these services.  

California's spectacular coast and marine environment belong to all of us. With your support I'll help bring the Harbor District into the modern age.

Please call 650-479-5654 with any questions.

Thank you,