Inside baseball: Marina Coast Water District and Fort Ord

How much water the Fort Ord Reuse Authority gets for development from the Marina Coast Water District is the subject of a strongly-worded letter from district vice-president Peter Le.

In the letter to FORA, provided to the media, Le suggests the district will cut what it promised to FORA by roughly 600 acre-feet a year.

His reasoning was the authority — by not formally approving the district’s plan for a desalination plant at its recent meeting — must no longer want most of its water for the former Army base from desalination.

The most-recent FORA resolution from 2008 stated 3,000 acre-feet of water from the district would come from desalinated water. A 2005 agreement said 1,500 acre-feet would come from recycled water and 1,500 acre-feet from desal.

Assuming previous agreements are null and void, he now suggests the district drops down to 2,400 acre-feet a year (half from recycled water and half from desal).

District interim general manager Bill Kocher said the letter did not go before the district's board but noted that Le is the district's representative on FORA.

“The FORA Board’s action to not act on a recommendation regarding the MCWD water augmentation plan left many questions, particularly for MCWD who is trying to move ahead on fulfilling its obligation to provide additional water to the Ord Community for its build-out plans,” he said.

FORA attorney Jon Giffen said Wednesday the authority had yet to receive the letter.

The correspondence comes after the authority, once again, declined to endorse the district’s plans at its Friday meeting, largely because of legal concerns.

There is still an ongoing lawsuit from the Marina Coast Water District against California American Water regarding test wells for its planned desalination plant. A preliminary injunction hearing for the lawsuit will be heard May 1 in Santa Cruz County Superior Court.

“A leopard hasn’t changed its spot,” Cal Am attorney Tony Lombardo said of the district at the FORA meeting. “They are still doing everything they can possibly do to stop the Monterey Peninsula from finding out if this is a viable water source.”

Monterey County supervisor Jane Parker asked how the district's plan ended up on the agenda again after the board failed to endorse it at its previous meeting. Chair Frank O’Connell said it was an honest mistake that the item appeared as an “action” item instead of just information.

Del Rey Oaks Mayor Jerry Edelen continued to use strong language with the district for potentially blocking Cal Am’s effort to produce more water.

“It looks like (the district) is trying to cut Cal Am’s throat in court,” Edelen said.

Supervisor Dave Potter urged the agencies to stay out of court while Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter argued everyone needed to find a way to get along.

“You’re going to have to figure out how to work together,” Gunter said. “And maybe you’ll put your slant wells right next to each other and work it out and build a bigger, better desalination plant. You need to stop acting like bullies, children.”

Battle of the "Pacific Grove" songs

America's Last Hometown has a song battle going on and we are divided at The Herald which anthem is better.

Pacific Grove, where it is illegal to kill a butterfly (and apparently stay open past 6 p.m.), is the subject of songs by Julie Capili and Matt Costa.

Capili recently hit it big with "Butterfly Town," an insanely catchy tune with a new video financed by the Pacific Grove Chamber of Commerce (see the story in today's Herald).

But, local radio station KRML has been playing a song by Costa for a while now that I think it really swell.

Here is Costa's:




Here is Capili's:



Or, rather than argue over which song is better, we could just support both artists who were inspired by Pacific Grove.

Here are their websites:

Julie Capili: http://www.juliesingsjazz.com/

Matt Costa: http://mattcosta.com/

Where's Bixby? Monterey (After an 8,200-mile bike trip)

We get a lot of people stopping by The Herald but this one actually put a smile on our faces.

Mike Minnick, 38, and his dog Bixby, 5, stopped by the office after pedaling 8,200 miles by bike to get to the First City.

For nearly 19 months, Minnick has been on his Yuba Mundo bike, with the female border collie mix in a carrier over the rear wheel. From Lubec, Maine, to here, people have been following along on WheresBixby.com.

He arrived in Monterey on Friday and has been enjoying Cannery Row and other tourist spots. He said he was irked he could not ride on 17-Mile Drive because of the AT&T National Pro-Am.

Santa Cruz Sentinel was also visited by Minnick and wrote a story about him last week. He also rode his bike to other Monterey area media and will probably go to every newspaper and TV station as he travels south.

He says he does it to highlight the benefits of animal adoptions and local shelters. He said he paid for the trip by selling everything he owned and some donations collected on the Bixby website.

A little known song by a not that well-known artist gets him up the tough hills, Jerry Jeff Walker's "Maybe Mexico."

Minnick said he is looking forward to riding across the Bixby Bridge next, which he joked was named for his faithful companion.

Monterey's recent public records requests

Monterey City Council in  October (Molnar)

Monterey got about 80 public records requests in the last six months with no unified theme among them.

As expected, there are a fair amount of requests from journalists and attorneys.

Gordon Smith of Veterans Wild Fort Ord and environmental attorney Zan Henson had one of the more interesting threads of requests. They both were asking for a lot of information on La Sala's Bi-Rite Market on Casa Verde Way. 

"I represented a neighbor who lived down the street who was concerned that they were expanding their operations and it turned out they were," Henson said today. "So, they cut back some of their outdoor operations." 

No lawsuit was ever filed in the matter. 

Here are the requests: 

Presidio of Monterey's questionable FOIA response

Presidio in May 2014 (Molnar)

The Presidio of Monterey continues to be cagey about an incident that caused the evacuation of the base back in mid-August.

After months of silence, The Herald was able to determine hundreds of students, faculty members and military personnel fled because officials believed an instructor intended to blow himself up.

This newspaper was only able to figure that out using a California Public Records Act request for all communication from law enforcement to dispatch at the Monterey County Emergency Communications center in Salinas. All the Army said was  that a  "real world incident" took place, a suspect was in custody and there was no danger to the public.

A Freedom of Information Act request for the Presidio, made at the same time as the state request, came back empty.

The Herald asked for: "All emails, reports and correspondence concerning the
Aug. 8, 2014, incident at the Presidio of Monterey that required an emergency
drill to be halted."

What we received was three press releases without an explanation of why nothing else was included. This would mean: 1) No one sent any emails, made any reports or sent any letters on a major military instillation, and home to the Defense Language Institute, about a basewide evacuation or 2) It ignored the law in its response.

FOIA law says government agencies must give "the reasons therefor" not granting a request. The Presidio's response just says "please find enclosed partial response." The fine print of the act is on the Department of Justice's website.

You can view the Presidio's response below:

What do you think of the Monterey Conference Center design?

Above is a high resolution image of the initial design of the Monterey Conference Center that debuted last night.

Architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP sent me the photo around 1 a.m. last night, so it was not able to make print. Designs are not set in stone but the next meeting is fairly soon  -- Dec. 23 -- so it is not as if there is no urgency.

There was a lot of concern raised by the business and hotel community at the meeting to get something done because of groups trying to book events. At the same time, the City Council, Planning Commission and Architectural Review Committee are under pressure because of the $32 million price tag.

As the only reporter at last night's meeting, I have already received some backlash for having the gall to put in print some objections by elected officials to the design.

Monterey city manager Mike McCarthy wrote this to my boss: "The article in today's paper left the impression that it was very negative--I think early in the meeting it appeared negative, but by the end of the meeting, it was pretty clear that most agreed the drawings were right on track."

The video of last night's meeting should be uploaded here in a few days for those that want to see comments from officials for themselves.

The hotels might want it done soon, but it is something residents will need to see almost everyday and tourists are paying for.

Three hotels surrounding the center will cover the majority of the cost, with the other 65 hotels, motels and inns implementing a 1.6 or 0.8 percent tax on each bill. That means if you visit Monterey, and stay in a hotel, you are paying for this thing.

I have set up the comments on this site to not require a sign up on Blogger.com or anything like that. Please post your opinion! You might not own a hotel but your opinion is valuable (to me, anyway). Do you think the building is "right on track"?

NOTE: In the comment section, the easiest way to post is to select "Anonymous." But, feel free to leave your name if you want.

UFO in Monterey?

I was at Del Monte Beach around 6 p.m. Sunday when one of my friends noticed something in the sky.

It was red and orange and seemed to be moving much slower than a plane, helicopter or drone. I am at least 90 percent sure it was one of those flying Chinese lanterns.

My three friends there were pretty excited about whatever it was so I sent the video to Monterey Regional Airport.

"Our Operations Officer had seen a drone recently but the only other explanation is Santa?" said spokeswoman Jennifer Hickerson.

Unlike the Monterey Bay sea creature that turned out to be a whale carcass, this mystery (probably a Chinese lantern) continues.