Friends of Mill Valley

State housing mandate foes make presence known at MCCMC’s monthly meeting
By Soren Hemmila, Marinscope Newspapers
Published: Wednesday, April 4, 2012 12:27 PM PDT
http://www.marinscope.com/articles/2012/04/04/mill_valley_herald/news/do...

About two dozen community members opposed to housing mandates from the state turned out to give planning officials a piece of their mind at a meeting of the Marin County Council of Mayors and Councilmembers last week.

The meeting took on a surrealistic feel at times — at one point officials made public offerings of leftover tempura shrimp as citizens expressed their concerns over various issues. The MCCMC and city staff sat at tables dining while the public was stationed in an auxiliary seating area.

From Marin Independent Journal - readersmarinij.com

Supervisor Steve Kinsey states that Marin County must state the right tone in its request that the Association of Bay Area Governments seek an independent analysis of its jobs/housing numbers and that "squeaking too loudly" might backfire and other Bay Area cities might begin to balk at the One Bay Area plan.

I say bring it on and squeak loudly.

If it results in other cities questioning the One Bay Area plan and balking at ABAG's bogus numbers, then that would be great news for the voice of the people.

My guess is that this issue is finally becoming an important one for our local politicians to deal with now that they realize that there are many of us upset about this regionalization of housing/zoning control and we are organizing to fight it. But also remember, it is an election year so local politicians are tuned in to us for a change and don't want to ruffle our feathers.

By Richard Halstead
Marin Independent Journalmarinij.com

Several Marin community groups, united in their opposition to a regional planning initiative focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, have joined forces to form an organization calling itself Marin Communities Coalition for Local Control.

The coalition, which has been quietly conducting monthly meetings for close to a year, is seeking a higher profile now as it attempts to interject its issues into the political debate leading to the June 5 election. Three candidates — San Rafael Councilman Marc Levine, who is running for the 10th District state Assembly seat; and supervisorial candidates Eva Long and David Weinsoff — attended the coalition's monthly meeting last week, at the invitation of the organization's leaders.

By Dick Spotswood
Special to the IJ
http://www.marinij.com/opinion/ci_20193106/dick-spotswood-standing-up-lo...

A PRUDENT PERSON knows that if you don't stand up and defend yourself, your opponents will run right over you. While many Marin elected officials don't get it, Corte Madera and Larkspur's councils and Novato's neighborhood groups understand this rule.

They stood up and defended their communities' small town sense of place.

Demonstrating the benefits of aggressive push back are the most recent housing and household numbers released as part of the Association of Bay Area Government's One Bay Area state-mandated initiative to create 660,000 new Bay Area housing units.

To accomplish that goal, ABAG is trying to gut citizen control of city and county planning by imposing housing mandates on every jurisdiction in the nine-county region.

By Will Jason
Marin Independent Journal
http://www.marinij.com/larkspurcortemadera/ci_20119597/corte-madera-coun...

Frustrated by what they say is a loss of local control, Corte Madera officials say they want to lead a countywide charge to break away from an agency that oversees regional land use planning.

"These are unelected people who have this personal vision of what is good for everybody else," Corte Madera Town Councilman Michael Lappert said of the Association of Bay Area Governments, a regional agency that represents all nine Bay Area counties and 101 cities and towns. "They have no check, no balance."

The Town Council voted 4-1 Tuesday to end its membership in the agency known as ABAG. Several members of the council said they want to go a step further and create a new Marin council of governments that would be independent of ABAG.

By Carol Brandt
Guest op-ed columnmarinij.com
Posted: 03/04/2012 05:19:00 AM PST
http://www.marinij.com/opinion/ci_20090959

THE REPORT commissioned by the Marin Community Foundation, "A Portrait of Marin," suggests that neighborhood zoning laws be suspended and the commitment to open space preservation be set aside in order to construct high-density housing. It states that re-zoning is appropriate in locations where zoning laws were originally designed to maintain racial segregation.

To claim racial segregation was the agenda when housing was built in Marin in the '50s and '60s, is a ridiculous assumption. But then again, the report was done by a New York firm and I think it missed the mark on this and other issues in their report.

Dear City Council Members:

In September of 2011 Jim McCann and I met and discussed the Housing Element and a new approach to addressing ABAG / RHNA allocations. It is called the "Criteria Based" method of designating development sites. This approach, combined with the offering of various financial and zoning incentives, could have significant advantages over the simplistic "list the sites" approach that is presently driving so much community antagonism and distorting developer's understanding of "of right" zoning.

I sent you some information about this last year, but since you are now considering the General Plan and Housing Element, I felt is was a good time to reintroduce it. I urge you to make Mill Valley a leader in affordable housing solutions by building on the strengths of our community, rather than seeing those strengths as obstacles to planning.

By Paul Liberatore
Marin Independent Journal
Posted: 12/04/2011 08:00:00 AM PST
http://www.marinij.com/millvalley/ci_19457424

Have something you'd like to say to the Mill Valley City Council but can't make it to the twice-monthly meetings at City Hall?

Beginning with Monday's council session, that won't be a problem for Internet users as the city launches its electronic comment pilot program.

Citizens watching the live meeting webcast will be able to submit comments and questions to the council in real time during the public comment section of the meeting, in a process known as eComment. They may do so by using a form on the city website labeled www.cityofmillvalley.org/eCom ment.

Dear City Council:

Thank you for scheduling a one-year review of the City’s participation in MEA for the Tuesday, September 6, 2011 City Council meeting.

While there remain many areas of concern re: MEA, I’m writing to bring to your attention one specific issue around a potential conflict of interest.

The Mill Valley City Council, as a member city of MEA, appointed Shawn Marshall as our city’s representative to the MEA Board of Directors. We citizens count on the person in that role to ask the hard questions about contracts and policy, challenge assumptions, and bring neutrality to decision-making and reporting about MEA affairs as a representative of the people of Mill Valley.

Item 6: Consideration of an appeal by Betsy Bikle and Joyce Britt of the Mill Valley Streamkeepers of the Planning Commission’s approval of a determination pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act and the approval of a Design Review and Conditional Use Permit application for an 8,303 Square Foot commercial building at 15 LaGoma Street.