Por Patricia Mooney

Cannabis presentation

Cannabis Nurse Elisabeth Mack, RN, MBA, was San Carlos Area Council’s (SCAC) featured speaker on May 1. She spoke to a rapt crowd with not an empty seat in the room. Mack’s manner is scholarly-geek with a generous dash of humor. She delivered a presentation packed with information valuable to all interested in improving our health and well-being without succumbing to prescribed drugs that address certain symptoms while creating unwanted side effects.

Crime report

Local Police Liaison Officer John Steffen reported that there were three violent crimes in the last month.

One was a stabbing that occurred at Lake Murray on April 28, when a 28-year-old man picnicking with his family lost his cell phone. He used a friend’s phone app to locate the phone, which rang nearby where another family was recreating. The man who lost his phone became agitated, pulled out a knife and thrust it into a 26-year-old man who refused to open his backpack. The knife-wielding man shouted out a gang slur then fled into the lake. The police came on the scene to sort out the incident.

Officer Steffen reported that the highest incidence of crime in our neighborhood is thieves breaking into vehicles parked near the Cowles Mountain trailheads and reiterated that vehicle owners should be cognizant of leaving purses, parcels, laptops, phones, etc. where they can be seen through windows.

Officer Steffen was wearing his dress blues in order to attend a memorial service for slain San Bernardo resident, Lori Kaye, who was shot in the Chabad synagogue days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

New library

David Ege gave a report on the progress for a new San Carlos Library. He said we’re still waiting to hear back from the state water board people about the mitigation of the adjoining property that the new library would be jutting over.

One audience member commented that it’s now a parking lot that will remain a parking lot once the new library is built. Sadly, Judy McCarty, who once served as District 7 Councilmember, and was the motivating force behind a new library, died before it came to fruition. A senior in the room quipped that they’d probably be dead before it’s finished, too.

When it’s deemed clean, the city can purchase the site and we can begin fundraising for a long-awaited new library. By long-awaited, we are talking about 25 years of patiently waiting for our city, county and state representatives to do right by San Carlos and break some ground.

The day after our SCAC meeting, motivated by a community growing increasingly agitated for a new library, I spoke with David Gibson, executive officer at the California Regional Water Quality Control Board. He said it’s true that the parking lot will remain a parking lot.

He also said that although there is a hydrocarbon plume that must be remediated on the property by the gas station company that formerly operated there, the city is free to go ahead with the library project. Gibson has directed his staff to write a letter to County Supervisor Jacob with copies to Councilmember Scott Sherman and Mayor Faulconer stating that as far as the water board is concerned, there is no reason to stall the new San Carlos library any longer.

Representative reports

Edmond Perkins from Dr. Shirley Weber’s 79th Assembly District Office joined us. He spoke about AB-392, California Act to Save Lives. This bill’s goal is to increase the number of situations where law enforcement officers can de-escalate a potentially deadly outcome via conversation or other non-lethal methods. It changes the current “reasonable” deadly force standard to “necessary” force. This is an effort to stem the disproportionate number of young people of color who are shot and killed in police encounters.

Angie Law, from the Office of City Attorney Mara Elliott, announced that Ann Marie Council can sadly no longer join us at SCAC meetings due to a career move to Eastern Division.

Roarke Shanley from Scott Sherman’s office came bearing butter cookies to everyone’s delight. He reported that Councilmember Sherman was meeting with the City Council to review the 2020 fiscal budget, and that Sherman would be pushing the expansion of the San Carlos Library. Roarke also said that last week, the City Council voted to allocate $5,000 to the Lake Murray Fireworks show, which will pay for stage and lighting; and $5,000 to the Grantville/ Allied Gardens First Friday Summer Concerts.

— Patricia Mooney is vice president of the San Carlos Area Council. Have a San Carlos story to tell? Interested in SCAC Board membership? Email [email protected].