The Buzz 11.12.15

WHO’S IN TOWN?

Teenagers take the reins this week at the Pebble Beach Equestrian Center, which for the first time hosts an Interscholastic Equestrian Association competition for middle and high schoolers. Some 200 riders from the Central Coast will compete on horses selected at random; in a catch-riding competition like this, riders draw names from a hat, then get on that horse and go. The local team of 15 riders hails from Santa Catalina School, Stevenson School, All Saints’ Day School, and Pacific Grove and Carmel middle and high schools. They’re competing for a shot at the national finals, which will be held at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky, April 20-24, 2016.

9am-4pm Saturday-Sunday Nov. 14-15. Pebble Beach Equestrian Center, 3300 Portola Road, Pebble Beach. Free. 622-5985, www.rideiea.org.

WHAT’S UP WITH THAT

A reader emails this: “There is often an enormous line of unmarked police cars (15-20) making the left turn at Ord Market on the old Fort Ord in late afternoon. Who are they and where are the coming from/going to?” Market owner-operator Darryl Choates reports they are students from the local police academy topping off their gas tanks after driver training exercises at the nearby airport.

OVERHEARD

“Which speech is he giving? Economic development? Oh yeah, I’ve heard that a bunch.” 
- A member of Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s security detail at a Monterey Bay economic conference in Santa Cruz, during Newsom’s keynote address.

GOOD WEEK / BAD WEEK

GOOD: One of the most beautiful trees in Marina will remain just that: On Nov. 2, Shea Homes withdrew its appeal of an Aug. 27 Planning Commission decision to deny Shea a permit to remove a 75-year-old cypress tree from The Dunes development. According to a 2005 Tree Disposition Plan for the area, the tree was meant to be saved, but that had been forgotten as the years passed. Enter Marina resident and Tree Committee member Mike Owen, who, on a hunch, dug up the decade-old plans. Together with his wife, Candy Owen, they appealed the Tree Committee’s 3-1 vote in June to allow Shea to remove the tree (Owen was the dissenting vote). Upon learning Shea has had a recent change of heart, Candy was thrilled. “I am so happy,” she says. “It’s a tree, but it’s so much more than a tree.”

BAD: Most weeks in Monterey County Superior Court are bad for the justice system, with customary long delays forcing defendants and members of the public who want to watch court proceedings – which are public – to spend all day waiting for short hearings. Nov. 4 was a particularly bad day for the public that had gathered to go to court in Judge Mark Hood’s courtroom. One woman said she was there from Mexico to support a family member. A bailiff came into the hallway to announce the courtroom was finally open, more than an hour behind schedule, but that no members of the public would be allowed in due to security concerns because of the high number of inmates in the courtroom that day. One man, who’d spent all morning waiting to watch his son’s sentencing, summed it up perfectly in his remark to the bailiff: “This is baloney.”