WHO’S IN TOWN?
Last year, a team at the Naval Postgraduate School set a world record for launching and controlling the largest swarm of drones in the sky. The Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL) team had 50 of them flying simultaneously, without colliding with each other, guided by a single control system. They’re back this week in an effort to disrupt their own record-breaking control system with this “Hack the Sky” event, co-hosted by NPS and the Department of Defense Office of Strategy and Innovation. Data scientists, user-experience designers and drone hobbyists gather to help develop “the autonomy roadmap for the Navy.”
Friday June 24-Sunday June 26. Galvanize, 44 Tehama St., San Francisco. Free. (443) 254-7999, http://bit.ly/hackthesky.
WHAT’S UP WITH THAT
Several readers have asked what’s the deal with no more fireworks display in the area on July 4 as there had been historically. Monterey city officials report the challenge was safety: The estimated 30,000-40,000 spectators required around 110-120 officers, often from surrounding jurisdictions working overtime, to organize a safe event. (They also organized a fire/medical control center.) “Bottom line,” Assistant City Manager Hans Uslar writes by email, “We could not hire enough police officers to help us during the event.”
OVERHEARD
“The World Trade Center was brought down by two planes, not guns.”
- A man at Mal’s Market in Seaside talking to a woman about his opposition to gun control.
GOOD WEEK / BAD WEEK
GOOD:
For years, the sites of the former Bay View Elementary School and Larkin Elementary School in Monterey have sat mostly vacant. News of reshuffling of schools and filling of those buildings makes it a good week for Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, which expects every one of its properties to be at capacity for the upcoming 2016-17 school year. Charter school Bay View Academy (not to be confused with the former Bay View Elementary) and currently operating out of former Del Monte Elementary School, is growing. Grades 5-8 will move to the campus of the former Larkin Elementary on Seeno Street in Monterey. The private Trinity Christian High School, currently housed off Del Monte Avenue in Monterey, will move into the former Bay View Elementary location in New Monterey. Having full-time occupants on the campuses will bring more life to neighborhoods, and getting a private school tenant will also bring needed revenue to MPUSD.BAD:
On May 19, David Balch, an attorney representing the Water Ratepayer Association of the Monterey Peninsula, sent a letter to both Monterey County and the California Coastal Commission asserting that California American Water’s test well in Marina is drawing water illegally, and that the county and the commission are failing to properly enforce the North Monterey County Local Coastal Plan. The letter lays out several legal arguments as to why the operation is illegal, including causing harm to nearby agricultural wells, and asserts Cal Am doesn’t have a legal right to pump any water from an overdrafted groundwater basin, based on a 1902 legal decision that’s been upheld ever since. As the Weekly went to press, Balch says he has yet to hear from either agency, and he plans to file a lawsuit against both on June 23 – marking another delay in a long-delayed water project.
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