Friends of Mill Valley

Monday Readers' Forum

For the original article, see: http://www.marinij.com/fastsearchresults/ci_6004227

I'm flummoxed that the Marin Countywide Plan debate has been conveniently over-simplified by the affordable housing advocates and their developer allies.

Supervisor Judy Arnold's recent remarks were unseemly, but Marin Community Foundation CEO Tom Peters' and Gary Giacomini's saber-rattling was shockingly inappropriate. Since when does their mandate allow them to bully Marin's citizens and neighborhoods?

Giacomini, a developer advocate-for-hire who represented his clients at the Marin Countywide Plan hearings, appears to have a stranglehold over the Marin Community Foundation board. Giacomini's board chairmanship is a conflict of interest. The potential self-dealing should invite much-needed Internal Revenue Service scrutiny of the foundation.

In the debate over affordable housing in Marin, Dave Coury of the Housing Leadership Alliance says (IJ, May 10) that "low-income residents drive less and therefore create less traffic than those who can afford market-rate housing."

In other words, more residents in Marin equals less traffic.

Good news, except that any kind of new housing in Marin creates demand for such services as schools, police, fire, sanitation, etc. Doesn't that require more people and traffic to service the new demand?

Is there something I'm missing?

Jerry Tanner, Mill Valley

Monday Readers' Forum

Does the IJ headline, "Group declares war on NIMBYism" (May 10), reflect editors writing headlines to sell papers or does it accurately reflect the leadership of the Marin Community Foundation's approach to the problem of affordable housing?

To address the issues of housing, traffic, safety, density, financing, environmental impact and quality of life in the escalated terms of declared war is a disservice to all of us.

The question is not simply about affordable housing, but the evidence by which we determine the need, the criteria by which we select appropriate places, the mechanisms by which it is funded, and the long-term impact of our choices.

Thoughtful people in Marin neighborhoods, cities and throughout the county can respectfully engage in this importance topic without the media or the Marin Community Foundation declaring war in our back yard.

Susan Kirsch, Mill Valley

The IJ's front-page "declaration of war" on NIMBYism (May 10) showed clearly enough how the paper's policy has been swayed by advocates of a one-size-fits-all solution to the question of affordable housing. The editorial on Sunday ("Marin's NIMBYs put on notice") shows further how public opinion has been swayed in an unrealistic direction by well-meaning advocates.

It is of constant curiosity to me how “experts” can so often get so much so wrong. Marin Community Foundation’s declaration of “war on NIMBYism” is just the latest example of this.

But how can MCF defend a position that is diametrically opposed to its own goals, and not even notice? When a “community” foundation ends up attacking its own community, somewhere a little red warning light ought to go on that says, “Maybe we ought to stop and think about this.” Just when a growing public outcry is demanding that community voices be heard and incorporated into decision making, isn’t it a bit odd to increase spending on “marketing” of unpopular ideas rather than on trying to find better solutions? In fact MCF’s position is so wrong-headed that it’s almost hard to know where to begin.

April 23, 2007

Mill Valley City Council
Re: General Plan: Affordable Housing

As the City of Mill Valley moves headlong into an historic updating of the General Plan and its various aspects ( Housing Element, Circulation Component, MAPP, Affordable Housing Ordinance, etc.), it’s a good time to stop and ask some fundamental questions. Toward that end, please consider the following comments and observations:

In the May 12, 2007 edition of the Marin Independent Journal, Rob Rogers writes:

The (Marin County) Planning Commission has agreed to support a diluted version of the county's "housing overlay" program, scrapping plans for affordable housing in Santa Venetia, Tamalpais Junction and the San Rafael Rock Quarry and adding home allowances to sites in Marinwood and Marin City.

The "housing overlay district," part of the latest update to the Marin countywide plan, allows the construction of homes in areas of unincorporated Marin zoned for commercial development.

The new proposal, unanimously approved by the Planning Commission on Monday, cuts the number of housing units allowed within the new district from 758 to 658. It drops plans for homes at the Marin Waldorf School in Marinwood, the San Rafael Rock Quarry, Santa Venetia Market and Tamalpais Junction.

Mill Valley chocolaholics will have to travel farther to get their fix.

Miller Avenue small business institution Lyla's Chocolates will shut down in two weeks.

"The landlord doubled the rent," explained the harried counter worker as she hustled to truffle a long line of last-minute Mother's Day chocolate buyers.

Lyla's Chocolates joins Capricorn Cookware, Artisans, Village Music and others in the growing graveyard of charming independent small businesses that can no longer cut it in Mill Valley.