From:Effie
To:Erica Inderlied
Subject:Letter to City Council re Mar 5 meeting packet
Date:Tuesday, March 5, 2024 9:41:30 AM
External Email
From: Effie
Sent: Tuesday, March 5, 2024 12:34 AM
To: City Council
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; Jorge Garcia ; Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg ; Senator Laird c/o Clint Wierick
Subject: City Council meeting Mar 5
March 5, 2024
Mayor Waage, City Council, City Manager Garcia, Community Development Director Graham,
There is some discussion about asking the city to review how the LCP will address oceanfront development in the future.
I voted for the establishment of the Coastal Act and have consistently supported the broad goals of our Local Coastal Plan regarding public access, public spaces, and view corridors. I supported it both aa a voter, as a private citizen, and as an appointee to various assignments, including three years on the Local Coastal Plan Citizens Advisory Committee; service on the Pismo Beach Waterfront Revitalization Committee that produced the plan for the new Pier and Boardwalk from Main to Addie; and a stint on the Planning Commission. There was no boardwalk providing public access along the oceanfront downtown before we, as a city of involved citizens, made it happen. We have come to embrace tenets of the original Coastal Act as the norm -- and are a better city for it.
Sea Level Rise and Bluff Retreat are not new concepts, and bluff and beach erosion have been taken into consideration in every new oceanfront development that has been approved in Pismo Beach for decades.
In fact, the populace embraces these concepts, and with much of this already in ink in our plans, and engraved in our souls, we do not, in my opinion, need the Coastal Commission’s assistance any further.
Sustaining the Coastal Commission costs a small fortune and causes a lot of angst. It is time to entrust local plans, rules, and guidelines to local jurisdictions, and, above all, remove the right of the Coastal Commission to appeal locally approved projects to itself.
That said, we are in the process once more of doing our update, and I would like to speak to the issue of whether or not property owners should have the right to build seawalls and revetments to protect their land from collapse.
Of course, they should.
And the same goes for us as a city. We should continue to have the right to build seawalls and revetments to protect public resources…. Those public resources that the Coastal Act sought us to create and maintain.
…Not to mention that the first thing the city will do when that private oceanfront lot falls into the sea is build a seawall to protect the then-exposed street and sewage system. …At great public expense, rather than at the expense of the private sector.
My understanding is, that, at this time, the Coastal Commission has sought, or may seek, to place prohibitions on private property that prevent building or maintaining seawalls and other protections. I hope you will refuse to accept this, and, that you telegraph to all the other cities and counties on the California Coast to also refuse.
The efforts of private property owners, who own and maintain most of the waterfront in Pismo Beach, are critical to our continued well-being as a city, for as long as we can keep our heads above water.
Don’t kid yourself that the pier and boardwalk and projects like Ocean Boulevard are not next.
Stand behind private property, so private property can stand behind you. We are in this together.
Best,
Effie McDermott
166 Leeward Ave.
Pismo Beach, CA 93449
[email protected]
805 -- 550-4854
Cc: Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg
Senator Laird c/o C Weirick
Bcc: list