Last year the City was unexpectedly informed by the County that contracts with the Sheriff’s Office and 911 Dispatch would be increased by approximately 51% heading into the current fiscal year. Public safety is our largest expenditure. This increase along with higher inflation and lagging tourism revenue has resulted in a structural deficit of about $4 million which is unsustainable. The City has initiated a number of cost-saving measures: instituting a hiring freeze; bringing back staff from the Kelly Avenue Annex to share office space at City Hall; and a 10% reduction in overall expenditures by eliminating all but the most essential of services. But we will still need to increase revenues in order to return to a balanced budget. Harvey has a three-pronged approach to get the City out of the hole in the short, medium and long term.

In the short term, Harvey is advocating voters approve Measure R in November, a increase in the sales tax (excluding food items and drugs) from 9.375% to 9.875%, which should generate $2 million in new revenues to the City.  Harvey also backs an increase in the assessment collected by our Business Improvement District on each visitor night spent in the City, with proceeds targeted to bringing more hotel visits to the Coastside through the Chamber’s marketing efforts, in order to increase the amount of Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) collected by the City (a major source of City revenue).

For the longer term, Harvey supports the newly opened Opportunity Center of the Coastside, which will improve our economy through

• the JobTrain Program, which will increase the supply of trained labor on the Coastside through career training and online classes;

• Coastside Venture Studio, which will foster startups and is the only incubator-through-accelerator program in the nation dedicated entirely to resiliency tech;

• The Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, which will aid people seeking to start businesses on the Coastside with intensive training classes; and

• The Visitor’s Center, which promotes increased tourism on the Coastside.

It is a never ending fight to preserve our precious Coastside. Measure D (limiting growth to 1.5% annually) was passed over twenty years ago to protect our fragile infrastructure from overdevelopment, and Harvey continues to support it. Our Open Space is best protected by concentrating development in the downtown core. An inevitable consequence is that we will be building more densely and higher in the downtown area.

Another serious environmental issue is our lack of response to stormwater events. The entire Coastside is vulnerable to flooding and erosion from poorly controlled water coming from our eastern hills. Harvey supports a comprehensive region-wide plan to deal with our watersheds. It won’t be cheap, but not developing such a plan would be even more expensive.

Finally, Harvey is aware of the danger that sea level rise brings to the Coastside.  Surfers’ Beach, the Casa Mira apartments, the sewage treatment plant, even part of the Ritz Hotel are vulnerable.  These are difficult problems to deal with and we will need a variety of approaches in dealing with them, but the one thing we can ill afford is to ignore them.

Harvey is a member of the City’s Age-Friendly Healthcare Advocacy Committee and is currently working to bring a much needed Urgent Care facility to the entire Coastside.  Full-fledged Emergency Room facilities have never worked well here, but now there are plans in the immediate future for an Urgent Care services facility to begin seeing some patients in Half Moon Bay, as a precursor to wider Coastside service, relieving patients of the need to travel over the hill for acute medical care and diagnostic procedures, including lab work and x-rays.  Harvey has been involved in working out the issues to be faced in setting up such a facility, including the scope of services, insurance reimbursement, and regional coordination, as well as staffing, accessibility, and hours of operation.

Besides Harvey’s accomplishments in doing what the City can to help our essential workers, there is still much that needs to be done. Harvey supports an increase in the City’s minimum wage. Our rent control and tenant protection programs have just started and Harvey supports vigorous enforcement so that tenants are aware of their rights. If Prop 33 passes in November, Harvey plans to increase the number of rental units which we can stabilize. Harvey knows of a few low-income housing developments on the horizon and of course will do everything he can to support them. Harvey will also support the programs of our local non-profit Abundant Grace which helps keep our beaches and streets clean, as well as educate homeless people to learn how to farm, giving meaningful work to many people down on their luck—a win-win for them and Half Moon Bay.

The Coastside is isolated and incredibly vulnerable to interruptions of our power, phone and internet service. Coastside communities have struggled for many years with increasingly unreliable electric power, spotty telephone service and poor internet connectivity.  These failings threaten the lives and welfare of Coastside residents, make it difficult to survive and recover from natural emergencies, and handicap the Coastside in competing for high tech professionals and businesses.

Harvey believes it is time to confront these deficiencies, and to enlist Federal, state, and local governments (as well as regulatory agencies) to bring pressure to bear upon unresponsive utilities and service providers to improve their operations on the Coastside. He will work with PCE to improve our resilience by installing microgrids and solar/storage solutions on government buildings. He will work with PG&E to improve redundancy in their power grid. He understands that competition is a strong motivator and will work to bring community broadband to the coast.  Harvey’s scientific and engineering credentials (he has a PhD in physics), plus his extensive experience with relevant agencies and providers, well equip him to catalyze such an improvement of Coastside services and facilities.