This Week on the Central Coast
Seaside High hosts a robotics competition, Sand City talks STRs, Coast Guard hosted training exercises, and Monterey professors travelled to Poland
Seaside High hosted a regional robotics competition
The 2022 Monterey Bay Regional FIRST Robotics competition was hosted by Seaside High School. Thirty-six teams competed, including eight from Monterey county.
FIRST is a non-profit organization that hosts annual robotics events in more than 100 countries. The competition puts teams in head-to-head games that showcase their programming skills. The competition changes themes each year and this year’s theme was “transportation”. For this year’s theme, robots transported balls to their team’s designated baskets. For the first fifteen seconds of a round, the robots must move autonomously. After that, the teams take control remotely.
Due to the pandemic, the organization hasn’t been able to hold its annual competition. This year was the first in-person event since 2019. Monterey High’s team is called the Robodores and consists of fourteen students. Seaside High’s team is named BayBots and consists of nine students.
Sand City addressed short term rentals
Sand City is the only city on the Monterey Peninsula without regulations on short-term rentals. A proposed ordinance would establish a maximum number of STRs and require property owners to live on the property. The council argued that this was necessary to prevent “residents of Carmel or Pebble Beach buying up Sand City properties and using them as hotels”. Mayor Carbonnne agreed, believing that the regulation is necessary to preserve the city’s character.
Additionally, several homeless services providers brought up their own concerns with Monterey’s City Council, explaining that the severe rise in rent is directly influencing increased homelessness. “Certainly building more shelters, providing more addiction and mental health services, and creating more affordable housing is within the city’s purview to effect change.” However, the city can’t build any new housing because of limits on new water hookups. They argue that the city needs to intervene.
The Coast Guard hosted a search and rescue training day
On Thursday, the U.S. Coast guard hosted a search and rescue training at Asilomar and Moss Beaches. The training scenario focused on a “person in the water” search.
The Coast Guard explained that this situation happens several times per year in this area. It is a time-sensitive emergency due to the cold water temperatures and relatively small size of a person’s head floating in the waves. The Coast Guard also addressed the usage of drones in coordination with rescue aircraft. They explained that drones could potentially interfere with a rescue, but could also be a helpful assistant.
Monterey professors travelled to Poland to help refugees
A husband and wife duo, both professors from Monterey, travelled to Poland to assist with the influx of Ukrainian refugees. They “helped them fill out paperwork, get medical help and connect them with their next destination”. The couple also brought water and hygiene supplies with them. To help fund it all, the couple raised over seven thousand dollars on GoFundMe.
The wife’s family has been stuck in Ukraine and have had no contact since the start of the war.
