Morning News Round-Up -- 4.13.10: Divorce proceedings begin...

San Mateo Medical Center is looking into how a rape could happen in its psych unit... sounds like a really good plan. To show how serious they are, Jean Fraser, the County's Health Systems chief penned an OpEd for the Daily Journal...

And it begins... the San Carlos City Council voted to start the divorce proceedings with Belmont over their shared fire department...

San Carlos also voted to discontinue their red-light cameras... ironic, since Belmont started their red-light cameras this week. No wonder these two kids can't get along... (SSF is also thinking about life without red-light camers...)

Pigeon Point Lighthouse, Watch Dog's favorite coastside location (aside from Nona's Kitchen) is in deep trouble. There was a big plan to redo the place, but everyone's budget stinks... which means Pigeon Point Lighthouse is in trouble too...

While we are on the coast... a property owner in El Granada beat the Coastal Commission in court. Now a gigantic house can be built... how fun.

Speaking of historic (?) structures in San Mateo County, the Steve Jobs/ Woodside/ iMansion issue still isn't over yet. Jobs has a demolition application in with Woodside officials but they also got a request from a local couple to move the soon-to-be-demolished house to their property... will this ever end?

If you have been waiting for a hookah bar to open in San Bruno because you can't resist the sweet smell of tobacco... think again. San Bruno might be about to ban hookah bars... and a hookah bar without hookah is just a place with lots of cushions and carpets.

Here's something NIMBYs can get behind... there is a plan to install a cell phone tower in Portola Valley (y'know, so cell phones can work when you're riding your horsee)... neighbors are mad...

Thanks to a loyal reader (and the SacBee), we have this PensionMeter to share... we will write more about it later, but it doesn't look particularly good for our County... unless of course you are a current pensioner...

Morning News Round-Up -- 12.08.08: Surfing Summit Edition...

The impact of Jerry Hill's election to the State Assembly continues to trickle down. Watch Dog has written about this before, but the greatest movement seems to be in San Mateo. It is a widely held view that Carol Groom will be appointed to the Board of Supervisors from her perch on the San Mateo City Council -- opening up a City Council seat. A new name has surfaced as a possible replacement, Rich Hedges. Hedges is politically-connected to the labor movement and founded San Mateo NOW, which supported and pushed the Bay Meadows redevelopment. Stay tuned...Meanwhile, the applications are not pouring in for Hill's open seat, however. According to today's story, only one application has been submitted, and it wasn't Groom's. The Supervisors are going to make a decision this month about a non-democratic appointment, or a March special election to fill the seat. The Democratic and Republican Parties want an election...so does Watch Dog.

Matier & Ross at the Chronicle have many, many details about the hostage/slaying in San Mateo County on November 25th. It turns out Raymond Gee had been stopped twice in San Francisco -- both times he had a gun and one time he had 7 pounds of pot. Yikes. He was charged with a felony but was entered into drug treatment first. Then he met his victim on Halloween, stalked her, and killed her on November 25th...further details will undoubtedly follow...

The salt ponds in East Palo Alto known as Ravenswood are about to be turned back into wetlands in one of the biggest projects of its kind.

A downtown fire in Palo Alto caused the evacuation on a 'high rise' apartment building at Cowper Street and Forest Avenue on Saturday morning.

The Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce is getting a new Chief Executive. Paula Sandas who is currently a Planning and Transportation Commissioner will take over in January. She worked previously for Santa Clara County Supervisor Liz Kniss as well as the Palo Alto Weekly.

InsideBayArea.com has some photos of the new City Hall in Brisbane. Pretty cool structure.

A winning lottery ticket worth $158k+ was bought in Palo Alto. There is apparently no truth to the rumor that the ticket holder is afraid to come forward for fear of being robbed on the streets of Palo Alto...

15 leading 'surf advocates' gathered in Princeton on Friday to discuss the earth's coastal zones. Making this meeting the coolest meeting that happened last week in San Mateo County...

The Pigeon Point lighthouse received a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express. It is a $54,000 grant, but to restore and fix the lighthouse it will take $5 to $7 million.