Harbor District scraps security system

The Harbor Commission unanimously scrapped a $16,000 surveillance system purchased in 2004 at the Aug. 1, 2012 meeting.

The Half Moon Bay Review reported the following:

Pillar Point Harbor has experienced a rash of property crimes in recent months, but officials decided last week the area’s network of security cameras should be taken down and sold.

The $16,000 surveillance system was purchased in 2004 specifically to make the harbor a safer place, but San Mateo County Harbor District officials say the cameras failed years ago. A lack of maintenance and other problems left the four cameras inoperable, but the harbor manager left them mounted throughout the harbor based on the logic that criminals might think twice if they believed someone was watching them.

The purpose of the cameras was thrown into question last year after the crab boat “Tonita” sank in what some believed an act of sabotage. No one was arrested for the crime.

If the security cameras were working they could have caught the person responsible for the loss of his boat, said Tonita owner Chris Eatinger. He said the harbor district is drawing the wrong lesson from the incident and should fix the cameras.

“It would have been an open-and-shut case,” he said. “I’m discouraged to hear that they’re taking the cameras down. I think they ought to go the other way and fix them.”

The staff report also blames Santa Cruz-based Stagecoach Wireless, the vendor of the security system, for letting the cameras deteriorate and break down.

Still others say that blame is misplaced. Former San Mateo County Harbormaster Dan Temko, who originally recommended installing the cameras, said the security system worked perfectly until the harbor district severed its maintenance contract with Stagecoach Wireless. Harbor District General Manager Peter Grenell instead gave that job to the contract technician who handled its other information-technology work, and the cameras soon began malfunctioning, Temko said.

“I don’t know what Peter had against Stagecoach; the guy did a good job,” Temko said. “It was downhill ever since they left. The cameras would work, then they’d go down, and the service was not as good.”

Grenell was on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

Stagecoach owner Beat Naef said he began to suspect while working at Pillar Point Harbor that district officials were playing favorites with their own contract technicians. He believes he was ousted after the other, unnamed, IT firm began “playing dirty tricks” by not sharing their remote access logins and badmouthing him behind his back.

“Their consultant was only interested in pushing me out of the business,” Naef said. “They felt like I was stepping on their toes and there was animosity on top of that.”

After his service contract ended, Naef said he received occasional calls from the harbor district’s IT contractor asking for support on how his camera system worked. He refused to help.

The cameras began to fail about two years after they were first installed. The harbor district now plans to sell the cameras to recoup as much as possible.

Naef estimated the cameras would fetch no more than $100 each.

By Mark Noack | Thursday, August 16, 2012

Interview with Sabrina Brennan

Ian Butler interviews Sabrina Brennan, candidate for Harbor Commissioner

Pacifica Community Television — Channel 26 — Wavelength

Harbor District meeting videos coming soon to PCT

In 2010 Sabrina Brennan suggested that Harbor Commission meetings be videotaped and broadcast on public access television and published on the internet. In response to the suggestion Peter Grenell, Harbor District General Manager said, “It is in the best interest of the District not to videotape meetings.”

At the June 20, 2012 Harbor District meeting Commissioners voted against Peter Grenell's recommendation and approved videotaping biweekly Harbor District meetings.  During public comment, Brennan thanked the board for supporting openness and transparency in local government.

Checkout Peter Granell's comments in the Half Moon Bay Review this week.

It’s basically improving accessibility of harbor commission proceedings,” said Peter Grenell, the general manager of the Harbor District.

He expects they will begin recording sessions within the month, as soon as a contract with Pacifica Community Television is worked out and they obtain the necessary equipment. The estimated cost is $6,000 a year ($250 per meeting). Equipment will cost an additional $1,200. 

Matier & Ross do the ferry service math

South San Francisco ferry loaded with subsidies

SF GATE: Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, Chronicle Columnists. Updated 11:43 a.m., Monday, June 25, 2012

That new ferry line to South San Francisco opened to a lot of fanfare, offering rides to and from Oakland and Alameda in less than 55 minutes.

What's not being talked about is that for every $14 round-trip ticket sold, the public will be kicking in a subsidy of nearly $100.

People who pay taxes and tolls will be picking up the bill for an armada of costs for the new ferry over the next 20 years. They include:

-- $26 million for the new Oyster Point ferry terminal, paid for largely with San Mateo County sales tax money.

-- $16 million for two 140-seat ferries, paid for from Bay Area bridge tolls.

-- And a $2.6 million annual operating subsidy, also paid from Bay Area bridge tolls.

Add it all together and you get $94 million over two decades. At an estimated 100,000 riders annually, that comes out to a public subsidy of $47 per ride - or $94 for every round trip.

Just to run the service next year - without taking into account any startup costs - the public subsidy is expected to total $26.60 per one-way ride.

By comparison, the Water Emergency Transportation Authority expects 472,000 riders next year on its Alameda/Oakland to San Francisco ferry, with a subsidy of $8 per ride.

For Golden Gate ferry service, which carries 2 million riders annually between San Francisco and Sausalito and Larkspur, the public subsidy amounts to about $15 per ride.

"The question is, will (the South San Francisco ferry) pencil out on the ridership and financial side?" said spokesman Randy Rentschler of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. "I think the jury is still out."

Ernest Sanchez, manager of the water authority's new South City line, said the agency is counting on ridership growing - even if it can't say by how much.

He says the spending is an investment in both the region's emergency preparedness and its congestion relief efforts.

South San Francisco is also betting on the ferry service to spur development. That explains why biotech giant Genentech and other local companies - which together employ between 25,000 and 30,000 workers - campaigned for the sales tax increase to pay for the Oyster Point terminal.

"There are space limitations out there, and it is difficult for them to keep building conventional parking spots and to jam people up at the freeway interchange," said Marty Van Duyn, an assistant city manager.

What's more, local real estate interests are looking to build office parks on more than 70 acres around the terminal.

In any event, says Rentschler, the ferry "is always going to be the Cadillac of service - you get tons of space to chill, and you can even have a beer on your way home, and it's always going to be subsidized."

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com.

Salmon project at Pillar Point Harbor

The Coastside Fishing Club released the second delivery of smolts with the tide on June 13th.

The Fishing club contributed $38,000 to construct the 54-by-30-foot pen that included solar panels to run a navigation light and a video camera.