The Buzz 07.05.18

GOOD WEEK / BAD WEEK

GOOD:

The Seaside colony of Heermann’s gulls, a seabird that breeds almost exclusively on a single island in the Gulf of California, is the only known Heermann’s gull colony in the United States, and it suffered a big blow June 5 when the McDonald’s on Canyon Del Rey – atop which the majority of the gull colony were nesting – burned to the ground after an early-morning car crash resulted in a severed gas line. The good news is that now there is a plan for a new nesting site: The local chapter of the Audubon Society received permission from Seaside officials to put a permanent raft on the surface of Roberts Lake in the hopes that it becomes a nesting site next winter. The raft, which is envisioned to be about 20 feet long and 20 feet wide, will likely have a gull decoy on it to attract other birds, and perhaps a device to play audio of bird calls.

BAD:

It’s been a bad couple of years for Greg Molinari and his restaurant and paper supply company, American Supply Company. Molinari’s business, located at 21 Happ Place in Salinas, is right where the Transportation Agency for Monterey County intends to build its Salinas Rail Extension Kick Start Project. In 2017, TAMC filed an eminent domain case to take over the property. Last month Molinari asked for, and received, a bigger deposit from TAMC, going from $722,000 to $1.99 million. Despite that boost, in a June 27 letter to TAMC, Molinari lays out what he says is the agency’s unfair portrayal that he acted in bad faith by building a 2005 warehouse addition – 12 years before the eminent domain filing – to increase the value: “TAMC is making this claim of ‘bad faith’ against my family for one reason, so it can deny compensation for the taking of our warehouse building.”