2019 year end update

For anyone thinking about making charitable contributions before the end of the year, HCN could sure use your support!

Last Thursday we spent 4 hours at the Federal Courthouse in San Francisco to participate as interveners in the UC versus FEMA lawsuit.

For those who might not know, after the historic settlement agreement reached between HCN and FEMA in 2016, UC attempted to undo pieces of this agreement by suing the very agency that had previously approved a grant of federal funds to the University.

Needless to say, HCN petitioned the court to be allowed to join the case as an intervener and was awarded this right. Since then we have participated in days of failed negotiations with UC and most recently submitting multiple legal briefs supporting FEMA against UC's assault.

While it's too soon to know, we are hopeful that the Federal Magistrate hearing the case will rule in FEMA's favor, preventing UC from obtaining access to the Biological Opinion that they need in order to move forward with a large scale project. As soon as we receive the ruling we will post it. As stated earlier, we are optimistic that the ruling will be what we hope.

Additionally, HCN is submitting a formal EIR scoping comment to the new UC vegetation management plan for the entire "hill campus". This is being developed with the assistance of our lawyers and will include an alternative that we believe will achieve better fire risk mitigation at a lower cost and with far less environmental damage than UC's initial proposal.

We thank you for your ongoing support of this effort and want to reiterate that without your support we would never have been able to sustain this successful effort over a more than 10 year period. With your support we have really made a difference!