A blog about Marinwood-Lucas Valley and the Marin Housing Element, politics, economics and social policy. The MOST DANGEROUS BLOG in Marinwood-Lucas Valley.
Marin County Bicycle Coalition members are being surprised to find their organization volunteering their neighborhoods for high density housing. Are they being used as pawns in the high density housing wars?
The Marin Cyclist’s Dilemma
While I’ve been outspoken regarding the need for bikers to follow traffic laws, I remain a big fan of bikes – cycling all around my home county of Somerset as a child on my Raleigh Arena racing bike. Now as I raise our 2 children to embrace bikes I face a dilemma:
- we want to join an organization that teaches our kids bicycle road safety
- we do not support high density housing
However the one organization here in Marin claiming to perform the first item – the Marin County Bicycle Coalition – has become one of the most ardent supporters of urbanizing Marin with high density housing.
Throwing Terra Linda Under the High Density Bus
Letter from MCBC to the City of San Rafael advocating support for the Civic Center PDA and Station Area Plan
I live in Civic Center / Terra Linda. Residents of 10+ Terra Linda neighborhoods fought long and hard for over a year to rescind the Civic Center Priority Development Area (PDA) and turn back a wildly ambitious high density zoning plan called the “Civic Center Station Area Plan” to something reasonable with a modicum of new affordable housing units and retain the area’s low rise, suburban character . The community eventually succeeded – but only despite groups such as Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC) pushing for the PDA to be approved.
Here is what the Marin County Bicycle Coalition had to say about the Civic Center Priority Development Area:
The Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC) would like to express our support for City Council approval of the Final Civic Center SMART Station Area Plan…MCBC urges the City Council to accept the SAP as presented.
It would have seemed reasonable and acceptable to me if MCBC had focused specifically on the bike lane parts of the Station Area Plan, instead of supporting a plan that would nearly have doubled the number of housing units in our area.
Strawberry in Mill Valley Gets the MCBC Treatment
An MCBC resident and Strawberry resident questions MCBC’s position
Strawberry in Mill Valley faced a similar challenge – while it did not suffer from a SMART “Station Area Plan” (which is always primarily about building high density housing, the name seems to omit this primary aspect), Strawberry was also designated a Priority Development Area (PDA) targeted for high density housing.
During the Board of Supervisors meeting that reviewed this PDA status an MCBC spokesperson clearly conveyed their organizations unreserved support for the PDA designation.
The video, linked to on the right, shows a MCBC member and Strawberry resident stating how he was never consulted and would not have supported MCBC’s position that targeted his neighborhood for development. Talk about cognitive dissonance!
Larkspur Gets the MCBC Treatment
Most recently the city of Larkspur has been the target of high density – with both a PDA designation as well as a SMART “Station Area Plan” proposing 920 high density housing units, a hotel and over 100,000 sq ft of retail and commercial space.
The letter sent by MCBC to the Larkspur City Council. Click to view a larger image.
Resident opposition to the Larkspur plan could not have been greater. In a meeting in mid May over 700 residents packed a council review meeting of the plan – perhaps 30 or fewer attendees supported the plan, almost none spoke to support the massive high density proposed. Based on the sea of red shirts worn by plan opponents ~95% opposed the plan.
Even members of the special interest group CALM could read the writing on the wall and instead of pushing for the entire plan with the high density housing to be accepted focused on salvaging improved circulation and bike paths.
But MCBC again was unperturbed – submitting a letter back on February 15th, 2013 to the City of Larkspur clearly supporting the Larkspur Station Area Plan stating:
MCBC has been active in advocacy for 15 years in Marin County. The [Station Area Plan] SAP encourages higher-density residential and transit oriented development, new retail and additional employment. This higher-density development in combination with public transit and key transportation facilities in the area necessitates the need for safe and interconnected active transportation facilities that will successfully provide for, as well as encourage, an increase in biking, walking and use of public transit within and through the Station Area.
Conclusion
MCBC does not appear to be clearly advising its members of the positions it has been taking. If one reviews MCBC’s mission it would be a leap of logic to conclude that this organization was an ardent supporter of high density development and rapid urbanization in Marin. This is the closest that it comes to declaring this position to new and existing members:
reduced road congestion and greenhouse gas emissions [but the high density housing surely has the reverse effect?]
influencing transportation policy and legislation
representing cyclists at public meetings
MCBC members are being taken by surprise as they find themselves speaking as individuals against this organization made up of thousands of members to which they belong.
As an organization MCBC should either reconsider its advocacy of high density development, or if it wants to continue with this advocacy then surely it should seek approval from its members? It should do this in the realization of the series of events that have served to demonstrate the immense opposition in Marin to high density:
The striking down of Strawberry and Civic Center PDAs
The immense opposition to the Larkspur Station Area Plan
The election of Damon Connolly who opposed high density housing
Any potential member such as myself, or existing member might question their support of an organization that so strongly pushes for high density in Marin.
Can someone please point me to the local bicycle advocacy group that can make the roads safer, help my kids to ride knowing the rules of the road, but that does not commit me to financially supporting a position which I deeply oppose – that of bringing more high density housing to Marin? [Important note: The author continues to support affordable, low density housing in locations that are appropriate. He was pleased when an additional reasonable number of affordable units were planned in his neighborhood in Terra Linda that were low rise]
Check
this apartment rental ad in Craigslist, They are asking $2365 for a one bedroom to be in
a "vibrant, midrise apartment building in Novato. This is what "smart
growth" brings us. CorteMazilla will be MORE EXPENSIVE (and more
vibrant, no doubt) Gimmee a break. This is the future of Marin if we don't
act to save it from greedy developers, politicians and housing activists.
All across the country, heavily armed SWAT teams are raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night, often just to search for drugs. It should enrage us that people have needlessly died during these raids, that pets have been shot, and that homes have been ravaged. Our neighborhoods are not warzones, and police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies. Any yet, every year, billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment flows from the federal government to state and local police departments. Departments use these wartime weapons in everyday policing, especially to fight the wasteful and failed drug war, which has unfairly targeted people of color. As our new report makes clear, it’s time for American police to remember that they are supposed to protect and serve our communities, not wage war on the people who live in them.
War Without Public Support
Nearly 80% of the SWAT raids the ACLU studied were conducted to serve search warrants, usually in drug cases. With public support for the War on Drugs at an all-time low, police are using hyper-aggressive, wartime tools and tactics to fight a war that has lost its public mandate.
Will your neighbor build an apartmentl like this next door to you?
Comment from This Article in the Novato Patch on Affordable Housing I am a sacramento resident, I purchased a new home in 2004 and low and behold a low income apartment complex sprung up in the vacant land right next to me, with a direct access to the apartments from our street. Anyone who will say that these complexes do not increase crime, traffic, parking issues, racial tensions, etc, have never lived next to one. Because we had a direct access,our street became a parking lot for the apartments to the point that we could not park in front of our homes, and had to discuss with the city getting permits for our street. Anything that was not bolted down in front of my home was stolen. We got video cameras mounted on the house and it produced hours of video of people violating our properties, urinating on lawns, breaking bottles in the street, damaging cars, id even come home to find random people playing on my lawn. It was a violation beyond words. Since then I have become very active in affordable housig locally and all I see is the state mandating requirements that no community wants, with the exception of the people that take advantage of the programs. Put $500/mo apartments next to $500k homes and try to tell me that they done effect property value. It invites transient residents who have no long term interest in the community, thrash the apartments, and move on to the next. They have "off lease' guests who cannot pass a criminal background check and cannot be evicted because they should not be there in teh first place.
Housing advocates limit the standards that can be put on tenants because they dont want to "discriminate" and the cities are terrified of lawsuits. Creating artificial housing markets should nto be the govts job. If people cannot afford to live there, they should move somewhere they can and the market will respond by either paying more for low wage jobs or building he homes on their own if there is a demand. I grew up in affordable housing and know its benefits, but also klnow the price a community pays to have it, including teh burden on schools, transit, jobs, and social programs. Sacramento "imports" housing need from surrounding communities because "if you build it, they will come"
As Water Supply Reaches Record Low, California Combats Drought With Black-Ops Weather Control Technology From Vietnam War
California is scrambling to prevent a water shortage crisis from escalating into a catastrophe.
Last year was the driest year in recorded history for many areas of California and conditions have yet to improve in 2014, according to recent snow surveys.
In January, after Gov. Jerry Brown declared a State of Emergency, California’s Department of Water Resources said it would reduce the supply of water from reservoirs to the lowest level in its 54-year history.
As the severity of the drought has escalated in recent months, the state has ramped up efforts to induce rainfall through a controversial weather modification technology known as cloud seeding.
Cloud seeding involves spraying fine particles of silver iodide into a cloud system, which causes water droplets in the clouds to form ice crystals that grow larger and turn into snowflakes.
Weather modification technologies are a staple of contemporary conspiracy theory. And for good reason.
On March 20, 1967, the U.S. Department of Defense began a top secret rainmaking campaign over large parts of North Vietnam and Laos known as Operation Popeye.
The operation used US C-130 aircraft from the Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base to spray chemical mixtures designed to induce precipitation into cloud formations. In total, the U.S. flew 2,602 missions and expended 47,409 cloud seeding units over a period of five years.
According to declassified Defense Department documents, the objective of Operation Popeye was to “increase rainfall sufficiently in carefully selected areas to deny the [Viet Cong] the use of roads by (1) softening road surfaces, (2) causing landslides along roadways, (3) washing out river crossings, and (4) maintaining saturated soil conditions beyond the normal time span.”
The Defense Department estimated that Operation Popeye increased precipitation in the region by about 5%.
In 1971, a newspaper reporter named Jack Andersen exposed the secret Operation Popeye effort when he reported on a leaked 1967 memo from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to President Johnson.
The revelation resulted in a political controversy about the military’s use of environmental modification technologies.
“Rainmaking as a weapon of war can only lead to the development of vastly more dangerous environmental techniques whose consequences may be unknown and may cause irreparable damage to our global environment,” said Senator Claiborne Pell, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
In 1977, the U.S. signed the United Nation’s “Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques,” which outlawed the military use of environmental modification technologies.
While the UN prohibition has prevented the federal government from engaging or sponsoring cloud seeding activities, it has not stopped the state of California from doing so.
In 2005, John Marburger, President George W. Bush’s primary science and technology advisor, requested that Senator Kay Hutchison from Texas defer consideration of proposed legislation that would have established a federal cloud seeding program.
In a letter from the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy,, Marburger stated:
The Administration respectfully requests that you defer further consideration of the bill pending the outcome of an inter-agency discussion of these issues that the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) would coordinate – with the Department of Justice on legal issues, with the Department of State on foreign policy implications, with the Departments of Defense and State on national security implications, and with pertinent research agencies to consider the reasons the U.S. Government previously halted its work in this area.
Unlike the U.S. government, California state agencies appear to have embraced cloud seeding as a cost-effective strategy for mitigating the impacts of a severe and prolonged drought.
Critics have claimed for years that cloud seeding was widely used by electric utilities and ski area operators, but those claims have been difficult to corroborate until recently.
For example, Sacramento Municipal Utility District has reportedly hired pilots to seed clouds over areas where additional snowfall would enhance their hydroelectric operations.
The California Department of Water Resources, which supply water to 25 million Californians and roughly 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland, estimated cloud seeding projects generate 400,000 acre-feet of additional water supply annually in the state. An acre-foot is enough water to supply a typical household for a year.
While California certainly needs every drop of water it can get, it is unclear whether it has the legal right to take water from other regions by artificially inducing precipitation. It is also unclear whether the technology is safe.
Critics of Operation Popeye claimed cloud seeding had contributed to devastating typhoons and flooding that took place in Vietnam in 1971.
DICK SPOTSWOOD: Larkspur's wise to jump off ABAG's bandwagon
The Larkspur Station Area Plan is dead. Thanks to unanimous action by Larkspur's City Council, the regional agency-financed effort to create a second downtown Larkspur died on the vine.
The council's wise decision presents an opportunity, not just for Larkspur, but for all of Marin to demonstrate the correct way to facilitate truly affordable housing and diversity without urbanization.
The aborted SMART Station Area Plan's rationale was always bogus. It had nothing to do with facilitating mobility at the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit's soon-to-be-built southern terminal.
Even the plan's environmental report acknowledged that the Sonoma-Marin commuter train's small projected ridership would have almost no impact on traffic and circulation at Larkspur Landing.
SMART was simply a weak excuse to satisfy regional planners' dream to urbanize what to them are the loathed single-family-home communities that make up much of Marin.
The plan had little to do with serious efforts to create affordable or even workforce housing.
It would do nothing to promote the Marin Board of Supervisors' endorsed effort by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to ethnically and racially diversify suburban America.
The plan's housing component was projected to be mostly market-rate. Like Corte Madera's much criticized 180-unit apartment behemoth on the old WinCup site, only a handful of projected units would have been "affordable." Claims that affordable housing was the driving force behind the Station Area Plan were just spin designed to attract support from the gullible.
Nor did it have much to do with the environment.
The available evidence indicates that the plan's proposed high-density housing and retail development would generate only a relatively few additional transit trips but would generate more auto traffic on already-clogged Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.
The scheme's projected benefits — especially for Larkspur residents — were so marginal that the City Council wasted little time scuttling the $600,000 effort.
Development and construction interests surely would have benefited. While that's fine and well, it pales in comparison with the economic and environmental burdens that would have been borne by Central Marin residents and Richmond-San Rafael Bridge commuters.
What it was designed to do was promote the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments' vision of "transit-centered" development.
It's a tempting notion that high-density housing built along transit lines would entice new residents to use environmentally beneficial transit instead of pollution-belching autos.
Only if it were so.
While the concept makes sense in dense cities like New York, San Francisco or Boston, there's scant evidence that the hoped-for result has occurred to a meaningful degree in any suburban American community.
Now Larkspur and Marin's other communities need to show that legitimate goals, including the creation of affordable housing, diversity and sustainability, can be accomplished without urbanizing Marin's small towns.
In the next few months I'll be looking at practical ways to achieve these objectives without the high-density blockbuster methods favored by the regional alphabet agencies and a few Marin politicians.
I'll include ideas from futurists eager to showcase their innovative ideas for a "new suburbanism." These concepts will protect Marin's small-town lifestyle while creating an even more inclusive community.
Report by researchers from Princeton and Northwestern universities suggests that US political system serves special interest organisations, instead of voters
Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the the preferences of the majority of AmericansPhoto: Bloomberg
The US government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has concluded.
After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite.
The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organisations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."
The positions of powerful interest groups are "not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens", but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes does overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10 per cent.
The theory of "biased pluralism" that the Princeton and Northwestern researchers believe the US system fits holds that policy outcomes "tend to tilt towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations."
The study comes in the wake of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a controversial Supreme Court decision which allows wealthy donors to contribute to an unlimited number of political campaigns.
[Editor's Note: One of the least understood part of Plan Bay Area for urbanization of Marin, is the fulfillment of HUD's mandate to achieve "racial balance". While we think diversity and integration of people and culture enriches us all, we object to the ham-handed approach of government mandates by quotas and racial politics. This dot by dot map is a tool central planners will use to target neighborhoods in need of diversity and government programs for outreach. The map is easier to view on the original map linked below. You can find your neighborhood in Marin and see it through the racial lenses of the social engineer. The whole thing gives me the creeps. Why in the world does a persons skin color make a difference in guiding housing policy? Should we intentionally force people to live in neighborhoods not of their own choosing? If so, one could argue that the largely Hispanic neighborhood of San Rafael's Canal District should be dispersed and repopulated with other ethnicities to "restore racial balance".
Please read the Access and Use Policy, which describes how this map can be used and how it should be cited.
NEW: You can see the new Congressional Dot Map project with election results here.
The Map
This map is an American snapshot; it provides an accessible visualization of geographic distribution, population density, and racial diversity of the American people in every neighborhood in the entire country. The map displays 308,745,538 dots, one for each person residing in the United States at the location they were counted during the 2010 Census. Each dot is color-coded by the individual's race and ethnicity. The map is presented in both black and white and full color versions. In the color version, each dot is color-coded by race. All of the data displayed on the map are from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 Summary File 1 dataset made publicly available through the National Historical Geographic Information System. The data is based on the "census block," the smallest area of geography for which data is collected (roughly equivalent to a city block in an urban area). The map was created by Dustin Cable, a former demographic researcher at the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Brandon Martin-Anderson from the MIT Media Lab and Eric Fischer, creator of social media dot maps, deserve credit for the original inspiration for the project. This map builds on his work by adding the Census Bureau's racial data, and by correcting for mapping errors.
The Dots
Each of the 308 million dots are smaller than a pixel on your computer screen at most zoom levels. Therefore, the "smudges" you see at the national and regional levels are actually aggregations of many individual dots. The dots themselves are only resolvable at the city and neighborhood zoom levels. Each dot on the map is also color-coded by race and ethnicity. Whites are coded as blue; African-Americans, green; Asians, red; Hispanics, orange; and all other racial categories are coded as brown.
Shades of Purple, Teal, and Other Colors
Since dots are smaller than one pixel at most zoom levels, colors are assigned to a pixel depending on the number of colored dots within that pixel. For example, if a pixel contains a number of White (blue dots) and Asian (red dots) residents, the pixel will be colored a particular shade of purple according to the proportion of each within that pixel. Different shades of purple, teal, and other colors can therefore be a measure of racial integration in a particular area. However, a place that may seem racially integrated at wider zoom levels may obscure racial segregation at the city or neighborhood level. Take the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area as an example:
While Minneapolis and St. Paul may appear purple and racially integrated when zoomed out at the state level, a closer look reveals a greater degree of segregation between different neighborhoods in both cities. While some areas remain relatively integrated, there are clear delineations between Asian, black, and white neighborhoods.
Lightly Populated Areas
Toggling between color-coded and non-color-coded map views in lightly populated areas provides more contrast to see differences in population density. Take North and South Dakota as illustrative examples:
In the black and white version, it is easier to see the smaller towns and low-density areas than in the color-coded version. Different monitor settings and configurations may make it harder or easier to see color variations in lightly populated areas, but the non-color-coded map should always show differences in population density fairly well.
Dots Located in Parks, Cemeteries, and Lakes
The locations of the dots do not represent actual addresses. The most detailed geographic identifier in Census Bureau data is the census block. Individual dots are randomly located within a particular census block to match aggregate population totals for that block. As a result, dots in some census blocks may be located in the middle of parks, cemeteries, lakes, or other clearly non-residential areas within that census block. No greater geographic resolution for the 2010 Census data is publicly available (and for good reason). A more accurate portrayal of the geographic distribution of residents is possible if data is available on the location of parks, buildings, and/or physical addresses. Individual dots could therefore be conditionally placed based on this data. The following is an example of using additional data to improve the dot density map for the City of Charlottesville, Virginia:
No Extra Data
Using Additional Address and Park Data
By conditioning the location of dots based on physical address and excluding locations with parks or commercial property, the dot map for Charlottesville becomes a more accurate portrayal of the population distribution of the city. However, the City of Charlottesville is unusual in that this data is made publicly available. There are no nationwide datasets for all parks or physical addresses. As a result, the national-level Racial Dot Map does not make these adjustments.
The Data
All of the data displayed on the map are from the 2010 Summary File 1 (SF1) tables from the U.S. Census Bureau. Table P5, "Hispanic or Latino Origin by Race," was merged with block-level state shapefiles from the National Historical Geographic Information System. Five racial categories were created based on the data in table P5: non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic Asian, Hispanic or Latino, and a category for all other racial categories including the multiracial identifications. The sum of all five categories equals the total population.
Methodology
Python was used to read the 50 state and District of Columbia shapefiles (with the merged SF1 data). The GDAL and Shapely libraries were used to read the data and create the point objects. The code retrieves the population data for each census block, creates the appropriate number of geographic points randomly distributed within each census block, and outputs the point information to a database file. The resulting file has x-y coordinates for each point, a quadkey reference to the Google Maps tile system, and a categorical variable for race. The final database file has 308,745,538 observations and is about 21 GB in size. The processing time was about five hours for the entire nation. The database file was then sorted by quadkey and converted to a .csv format. SAS was able to do this within an hour without crashing. Processing 2.0.1 for 64-bit Windows was used to create the map tiles. The Java code reads each point from the .csv file and plots a dot on a 512x512 .png map tile using the quadkey reference and x-y coordinates. The racial categorical variable is used to color-code each plotted dot. This process used the default JAVA2D renderer, but other platforms may work better using P2D. Map tiles were created for Google Maps' zoom levels 4 through 13 to make the final map. A non-color-coded map was also produced to help add more contrast for lightly populated areas. In total, the color-coded and non-color-coded maps contain 1.2 million .png files totaling about 7 GB. Producing all of the map tiles in Processing took about 16 hours for the two maps. The Google Maps API is used to display the map tiles. Map tiles with zero population are never created using the above method. Therefore, an index was used to tell the map application whether a tile exists in order to prevent 404 errors. The entire code is up on GitHub and was adapted from code developed by Brandon Martin-Anderson and Peter Richardson in order to account for the racial coding and errors in reading the shapefiles.
Editor's note: the KQED program about the Levine Bill AB1537 to change designation of Marin to Suburban generated a lot of commentary from Citizen Marin membership. Most of us feel that the bill is a ruse to actually INCREASE minimum zoning densities to 20 units per acre from 5-7 in most neighborhoods. The bill is enthusiastically supported by the pro housing activists, the Board of Supervisors who have been pushing for the urbanization of Marin
See the program the radio program and listen to the broadcast notes HERE
Commentary from Citizen Marin members: Citizen A.
I listened to the archived show on
Marc Levine’s bill (Michael Krasny Forum on KQED
and wanted to emphasize a few
points, for future messaging. 1. We keep dancing around, and
actually ignoring, the important point of growth being inevitable and good.
This whole program started from there, as does ABAG, that California is growing
and must grow, without addressing this premise as anything other than a given.
It’s a framing issue and I think we always need to emphasize this point. At
some point, too much growth, unlimited growth, is very, very bad.
Unsustainable. And it drives a Boom and bust cycle which favors the wealthy and
exploits the poor. 2. The other framing issue is
de-tangling the affordable vs the high density. That we are getting huge high
density housing with only a bit affordable. That the state doesn’t count other
lower density affordable housing which is unfair to local government and a big
bonus to developers and their wealthy financiers.
3. Water IS an issue. Only an idiot
would deny that. At what point are we beyond the tipping point with our water
resources; with population rising so much that all our conservation measures
are being lost? David Kundhart ignores the latest Climate Science for northern
California which predicts the same amount of rain in a shorter period of time,
causing more flooding AND more drought as the soils don’t ever get enough water
to really hydrate. He was really such a blowhard on this program. And the rain
DOESN’T FALL equally everywhere; it’s not equally proportioned on all of CA.
Some areas will be hit harder than others.
4. But the main problem is that
Marc’s bill will raise the minimum densities—or at least will
not cap them. As he said, “It’s a floor, not a ceiling. So everyone can
build at the densities they want or need.” And he trusts local politicians to
do the right thing, such as we saw at WinCup (sarcasm alert!)
In addition, it would only address
the density for this current HE, not the one that is already
certified with areas specified at minimum 30 units/acre w/o full
environmental review. So these parcels are essentially “pre-approved” at that
higher density, plus state bonus opportunity. Levine’s bill does nothing to fix
this: there is no retroactive fixing of the high density put into place by the
2007-2012 HE for the county.
And am I the only one to hear the
iron fist in the velvet glove, when Marc said, “this gives Marin a chance to
show the state it can build the affordable housing it needs,” …. or what? we go
back to being urban? Get more high density forced on us? The Levine bill is
just window dressing since it doesn’t change Marin’s designation to suburban
permanently nor retroactively.
MCA’s lawsuit is the only one that
addresses the HE the county has already submitted, which is set at the 30 units
per acre. This is the only lawsuit in the works that is addressing the past
very bad planning effort by the county, where environmental issues were
ignored; where public notice was ignored; and where the County Wide Plan was
blatantly amended to support it.
Other points showing the bill’s true
colors:
"Minimum default
densities"….the affordable housing people said this. State density bonuses
are still allowed. This is why they are for Levine’s bill and why it’s a pig in
a poke.
"Parking for Seniors is less
because they don’t drive." Although they DO go out by roads in vanpools or
by a friend’s car, since they don’t necessarily walk or bike everywhere; better
than single cars perhaps but it only addresses land needed for parking while
ignoring the impacts on traffic. Another issue requiring teasing out;
higher densities will mean more traffic; more need for services, like water.
"Up to local jurisdictions to
plan"….but local jurisdictions don’t seem to plan or promote good plans
but wait for developers to come forward and present something. And again the
state isn’t giving any points for low-impact infill development.
Nonprofit developers are in favor of
this bill….Affordable housing advocates are in favor….ABAG is in favor….
Um, need I say more? This is not the
bill you are looking for…. Fool me once….
--------- Citizen B.
I definitely agree with your analysis but I think you stop short. This is a bill to save face for the Supervisors and Levine and to cause local folks to look at the County and the state as less threatening when in reality the state legislature is actively trying to extend their reach so that local control is in the distant past. The face saving is to show that unincorporated Marin County can do as well as Novato did.
The worst part of what Kinsey and Arnold have done is to co-operate extensively with the urbanization of the 101 Corridor, posing the question as either agriculture and recreation in West Marin AND unlimited development on the 101 Corridor OR West Marin falling to development interests to keep the 101 Corridor as a string of towns, separated by greenbelts. This is a false choice which misleads the people. The original bargain, the Countywide Plan of 1973 NEVER included overpopulating Marin with continuous high density development along 101 while it DID intend to retain West Marin for agriculture and recreation zones and to protect the unique character of each of the towns in all of Marin.
-------------
Citizen C.
Your points are well
stated. I phoned into Forum with the intent of highlighting that the
densification of Marin has nothing to do with affordable housing or greenhouse
gases and everything to do with promoting construction; I also planned to chimd
in about points 2 and 4 on your list (affordable vs. high density; and that
even "suburban" ABAG densities are highly dense, and all the more so
with bonuses). Unfortunately my call was dropped about 15 seconds in, so
I was unable to make any of those points.
It is quite unfortunate that
Kunhardt had so many more minutes than Susan K or I would have had in
total. One would guess that his support of the ABAG/MTC (and CA political
hierarchy's) agenda, opens all kinds of doors that don't open as readily for
us.
------------
Citizen D.
While on one level, this
is a source of immense strength to the power structure that is advancing these
kinds of plans for the rest of us, it's also an even greater weakness.
The general public instinctively, in their very being, believes in fair play,
and honest and open deliberation of issues of public concern. The fact
that the power structure needs to rig the outcome, and rig the process--even to
the point of rigging a putatively objective presentation on this issues like
Forum, is a critical, critical point of vulnerability on their part--one that
will prove decisive when and if the general public understands they are doing
this.
I got involved in all of
this 2.5 years ago when a friend asked me to go to an ABAG-MTC Plan Bay Area
hearing. I knew nothing about Plan Bay Area, didn't even know there were
regional agencies, and couldn't spell "MTC" if you asked me to.
And I still knew nothing about any of these after the hearing...but I could
tell there was something terribly wrong. I could tell the process was
completely rigged. That's why I started investigating this, and that's
why I got involved. If someone who knows so little about this as I did
can get engaged because I realized something was wrong about this process, and
only because a friend asked me to look into this, virtually anyone can.
Once a critical mass of the public does so, they will insist that these kinds
of plans, and this kind of planning, be stopped.
Citizen E.
I saw a bumper sticker once
that said it for me ..."Change is inevitable but growth is optional"
and of course the growth being projected is not sustainable
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