Marinwood Protest Justice for George Floyd

Youtube video courtesy of MadebyMaven

San Rafael/Marinwood Fire Chief discusses Corona Virus Response

Marinwood's Acting Fire Chief Sinott explains the crisis preparation for the Covid 19 virus.  His serious professionalism is a stark contrast to the feckless Marinwood CSD manager who is simply waiting for instruction and has made NO CONTINGENCY PLANS.

Why the Maintenance Compound doesn't have Garage Doors and can't park vehicles

The Marinwood Maintenance compound is a "drive through" facility which wastes 1/3 of the volume for access road.  Support columns inside limit movement making it impractical to store vehicles inside.   The architect ignores the practical need of the facility to create a slick facade in violation of the age old design wisdom " form follows function".  Workman need access, light and ventilation and the Marinwood facility ignores these basic needs. It also means we have a significant larger and more costly facility which will require a large area outside the facility for parking and material storage.  What is the point?

Here is Bill Hansell explaining why he chose to ignore garage doors for our Maintenance garage at the May 2018 Marinwood CSD meeting.

Mid Century style building is cramped for vehicles has poor ventilation and is terrible for the practical needs of a garage, storage and work area. The architect ignores basic design principle that "form follows function" 

Income, Employment and Housing information for Lucas Valley-Marinwood

Lucas Valley-Marinwood, California

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81°F

10 miles

Wind:  18 mph
Pressure: 29.87 in
Humidity: 30%

Current weather forecast for Lucas Valley-Marinwood, CA

Population in 2010: 6,094. Population change since 2000: -4.1%

Males: 2,726	(44.7%)
Females: 3,368	(55.3%)

Median resident age:	49.1 years
California median age:	36.4 years

Zip codes: 94903.

Estimated median household income in 2016: $123,347 (it was $85,444 in 2000)

Lucas Valley-Marinwood:	$123,347
CA:	$67,739

Estimated per capita income in 2016: $59,341 (it was $38,423 in 2000)

Lucas Valley-Marinwood CDP income, earnings, and wages data

AFFH Has No Basis in the Fair Housing Act

AFFH Has No Basis in the Fair Housing Act

By Stanley Kurtz — May 17, 2016

The Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 was a great achievement, rightly prohibiting discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. President Obama claims that his wildly overreaching Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, finalized almost fifty years later in July of 2015, is simply fulfilling the purposes of the original Fair Housing Act. That is nonsense. It’s also a classic case of left-leaning politicians achieving their ends by reading radically new meanings into well-established laws.

This week the Senate will go on record for the first time on an amendment to a THUD (Transportation and Housing and Urban Development) appropriations bill defunding AFFH. Since the House has twice passed such an amendment and is likely to do so again, the Senate vote has turned into a major showdown over Obama’s radically transformative new housing regulation.

If the Senate passes Sen. Mike Lee’s amendment defunding AFFH, President Obama will have to either accept the end of AFFH or veto the THUD bill. He will also have to decide whether to do something he has deliberately and successfully avoided for years: publicly defend his radical and sure-to-be-unpopular housing agenda.[Editor's Note 7/23/2016: Sen. Mike Lee's bill did not make it to the Vote and toothless legislation was voted on instead. Republicans and Democrats suck.]

To prevent all this, defenders of AFFH are aggressively taking the line that defunding Obama’s revolutionary new rule, which federalizes the core functions of local government and turns suburbs, towns, and even mid-sized cities into helpless satellites of nearby megacities, is nothing but a bit of new guidance showing localities how to fulfill their existing obligations under the Fair Housing Act of 1968. This is simply wrong.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 says nothing whatever about withholding HUD grants from localities unless they nullify classic suburban zoning patterns to build high-density low-income housing. FHA is strictly about preventing overt discrimination in housing transactions. The Obama administration and its activist allies have sought to read new meanings into a few brief phrases in FHA requiring HUD to administer its programs in such a way as to “affirmatively further” the purposes of the act. Yet it’s perfectly clear that this was simply an instruction to HUD to aggressively monitor its programs to make sure that no overt discrimination was taking place.

But don’t take my work for it. Consider this account of the Fair Housing Act by Charles M. Lamb, author of a 2005 book on federal housing policy. Lamb was a fair housing specialist with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and has taught constitutional law and civil liberties at the University of Buffalo, SUNY. More importantly, Lamb is an enthusiastic advocate of precisely the kind of housing policy favored by President Obama. In his book, however, based on extensive archival study of the intentions behind the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Lamb makes it clear that a housing policy of the kind now favored by President Obama would have to move well beyond the intentions of the FHA itself. Here is Lamb on what he calls the “weakness” of the original FHA:

“…nothing in the Fair Housing Act expressly requires the federal government to encourage suburban racial integration through the use of subsidized housing. Nor does the Fair Housing Act forbid economic discrimination of any kind or require government to promote suburban economic integration in any way. The act certainly prohibits various forms of discrimination based on race and provides that the secretary of HUD shall affirmatively promote the goal of fair housing. Still, the Secretary’s stated duties do not include promoting suburban racial or economic integration by linking HUD funding to a requirement that low-income suburban housing also be built.” (p. 47)

Again, Lamb strongly favors aggressive attempts to control suburban housing of exactly the type now adopted by President Obama. Yet Lamb is honest enough to admit that FHA in no way authorizes such policies. I wonder if Lamb would have been so honest had he written in the wake of Obama’s attempt to radically reinterpret the plain meaning of the FHA.

Lamb also makes a point that turns out to be essential to understanding the overreach of Obama’s AFFH. The Fair Housing Act does nothing whatever to promote “economic integration.” And as Lamb also notes, “No federal court has ever declared that the Fair Housing Act requires economic integration in housing.” Yet AFFH is precisely an attempt to create a de facto legal requirement for economic integration under the cover of the FHA.

Public commenters on the first draft of AFFH recognized this. They challenged AFFH on the ground that poverty is not a “protected class” under the Fair Housing Act. Here is how HUD replied to that challenge in the finalized AFFH regulation:

“ The focus and purpose of the AFH [Assessment of Fair Housing required under AFFH] is to identify, and to begin to overcome, the causes and contributing factors that deny or impede housing choice and access to opportunity based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability. In addition, a large body of research has consistently found that the problems associated with segregation are greatly exacerbated when combined with concentrated poverty. That is the legal basis and context for the examination of RCAPs/ECAPs [Racially and Ethnically Concentrated Areas of Poverty].”

This is an extraordinarily weak argument. First, it implicitly concedes that economic integration is not in fact mandated by FHA, but needs instead to be attached to the legally protected classes by academic studies showing that poverty is an aggravating factor in housing issues. But by that reasoning, Congress’s refusal to mandate a radical new policy of government-imposed economic integration becomes meaningless. By the reasoning adopted in AFFH, any law could be indefinitely extended to suit the tastes of scholars and bureaucrats, rather than democratically elected legislators.

The spurious claim by AFFH that the federal government is now legally obligated to impose economic integration on every locality in America leads to nonsensical results. In a 2015 Rasmussen poll, 83 percent of respondents said it was not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods by income level, while only 8 percent said that this was an appropriate task for government. Yet now, the Obama administration has promulgated a rule that effectively adds the radical new principle of government-imposed economic integration to law, when nothing of the sort appeared in the original FHA, and the public to this day overwhelmingly opposes the idea. AFFH effectively nullifies the very idea of legislative democracy.

Advocates who falsely read a policy of racial and ethnic quotas and forced economic integration back into FHA also like to quote FHA co-sponsor Sen. Walter Mondale, who said that the reach of the proposed law was to replace “ghettos by truly integrated and balanced living patterns.”

This proves nothing. Public debate over the original FHA was driven above all by the bill’s main advocate, President Lyndon Johnson. And Johnson continually made clear his belief that it was overt housing discrimination that had bottled up America’s minorities in sub-standard housing. Johnson wanted “integrated and balanced living patterns” too, but his point was that the right way to get there was by banning discrimination. Lamb’s study makes it clear that, “Johnson’s entire effort focused on nondiscrimination in urban housing,” and was not at all about pressing suburbs to take high-density low-income housing (even though Lamb himself strongly favors imposing such policies on suburbia).

In short, the claim that President Obama’s AFFH does nothing more than elaborate on obligations already implicit in the Fair Housing Act of 1968 is false. On the contrary, AFFH is an attempt to radically reinterpret FHA by creating a basis for de facto federal control of suburban zoning and planning, and a mandate for economic integration that exists nowhere in the original Fair Housing Act. AFFH is federal overreach on steroids, and deserves to be repealed and repudiated, not only on policy grounds but out of basic respect for the democratic process. Our constitutional system depends on the integrity of our laws. Once executive regulations effectively usurp the legislative power, Congress itself is rendered powerless, and our constitutional republic is lost.

— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He can be reached at comments.kurtz@nationalreview.com.

Editor's Note: The Marin County Board of Supervisors APPROVED of the new AFFH rules and will now be carrying out its directives.  Expect that the communities with the least political power will accept the brunt of this new directive.  Communities  in the unincorporated areas of Marin such as Marin City, TamAlmonte, Strawberry, Kentfield, Marinwood/Lucas Valley and others are especially vulnerable.

Why I love living in Marinwood- Nature

This is the real reason I love living in Marin. Nature in all her beauty. I lived in Los Angeles for 16 years and never saw a clear starry night under the pink glow of urban living. I gladly trade convenience, culture, fine dining and other "advantages" of urban living for a moments peace with nature. Photo taken from my garden in the early morning in Marinwood, CA.

The Nisja Bear Xmas house gets recognition by Marinwood CSD

Roy Nisja and Family have been hosting the "Bear Xmas house" for 37 years. It is a major area attraction for the holidays.  2017 was its last year in Marinwood and the Marinwood CSD thanks them.

In November 2016, RWQCB asks staff to bring up Fines for Marinwood Plaza Toxic Waste site.

Nov 08, 2016  Oakland, CA RWQCB Chairperson Dr. Terry Young closing remarks about the Prosperity Cleaners (Marinwood Plaza) Toxic Waste clean up.  She recommends that staff put penalties for non compliance on the agenda and it is acknowledged by Bruce Wolfe, Director.

The Marin IJ reports on the Marinwood CSD Firefighter lawsuit

Marinwood firefighters file lawsuit claiming overtime pay violations

By Gary Klien, Marin Independent Journal

POSTED: 01/05/17, 7:56 PM PST | UPDATED: 6 HRS AGO

0 COMMENTS

Fifteen former or current Marinwood firefighters are suing the Marinwood Community Services District, claiming it shorted them on overtime pay.

The lawsuit alleges the district violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by miscalculating the regular pay rate upon which overtime is based.

The firefighters said the district should have included not just hourly pay in its calculation of the regular pay rate, but also other compensation such as special assignment pay, holiday pay, college incentive pay and reimbursement for benefit costs.

The lawsuit, filed Dec. 29 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, does not specify a dollar amount for the alleged underpayments. The suit asks for a court-ordered audit by the Marinwood district to determine proper compensation.

The firefighters are also seeking three years’ back pay plus interest and attorneys’ fees.

The plaintiffs are Ross Anderson, John Bagala, Ryan Brackett, Esteban Cespedes, Cesar Correa, Brad Davenport, Sean Day, Stephen Heine, Keith Larson, John Papanikolaou, Brandon Selvitella, Brian Smith, Jeff Smith, Joel White and Alexander Wilhelm.  See full article HERE.

Did Marinwood get off the Target List for HUD (What about Marin Supervisors?)

Dick Spotswood: Trump’s election could take Marin off HUD’s target list

Dick Spotswood, seen on Tuesday, Jan. 05, 2016, in San Rafael, Calif. (Frankie Frost/Marin Independent Journal) 

POSTED: 11/15/16, 4:03 PM PST | UPDATED: 9 HRS AGO

8 COMMENTS

Donald Trump’s upset presidential victory coupled with a Republican majority Congress will have significant Marin implications.

A major change will come with the expected shake-up of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Marin has been under intense pressure from HUD, not only to develop more affordable housing, but to “affirmatively further fair housing.”

That’s HUD 2015 rule utilizing quotas by ZIP code to guarantee that sufficient affordable housing is provided in each city, town and village for “underserved” African-American and non-white Hispanic households.

HUD’s first test case was New York City’s prosperous suburb, Westchester County. That’s where HUD pursued litigation linked to a compact similar to the compliance agreement Marin’s Board of Supervisors signed under pressure with HUD in 2011. HUD’s goal was to bring the reluctant county into compliance with strict federal diversity guidelines.

Westchester is said to be New York’s Marin and Marin was widely expected to be HUD’s second test case in 2017.

Westchester was a reliably blue county until HUD pushed hard. The upshot was a voter revolt that elected a Republican county executive, Rob Astorino. The county’s elected combined mayor and chief executive, Astorino is a bantam-weight street fighter who consistently fought a rear guard action against the determined federal agency.

With Trump’s victory, the housing activist concept of “affirmatively furthering fair housing” is likely one of the new administration’s first casualties. Trump is expected to gut HUD’s headcount. That’s a strategy Republican administrations use to dispose of career bureaucrats perceived as being in their opponents’ ideological camp.

New York-area rumors are that Astorino, in other matters a moderate suburban Republican, is on Trump’s short list to be HUD secretary. Trump, who owns a golf course in Westchester, knows Astorino. The county’s top honcho supported Trump, despite the usual reservations.

With federal pressure likely trailing off in coming months, Marin’s commitment to provide a more diverse community will be tested. Many Marinites opposing HUD’s strong-arm tactics pleaded that the county was willing and able to move diversity forward on its own initiative.

Diversity is an overdue goal that can be achieved without blockbuster developments, but only if the political will is strong enough.

While local control is far superior to Uncle Sam calling the shots, the challenge now is for Marin to keep its promise absent threats of federal intervention. See Full Article HERE

Editor's Note:  Marinwood has been the target for the Board of Supervisor for massive HUD affordable housing projects for decades.  Susan Adams silently lobbied her fellow supervisors and the Association of Bay Area Governments to make Marinwood a "priority development area" which would mean massive subsidies for low income housing developers.  She beamed with pride in her skill at political manipulation of the local community to make Marinwood Plaza a shining example. Bridge Housing was lured with massive subsidies.  When her plans finally were revealed to the community,  she denied any knowledge.  One deception lead to another and finally led to her political defeat in 2014.  The affordable housing lobby only is profitable (and hugely so) when it has access to massive government subsidies.  This is very likely to change under a Trump administration.   Sensible development that takes community infrastructure, traffic and need for new schools will be welcomed.  Massive crony development that places great tax burden on our community will not have an easy path to development.   

NextDoor Marinwood Mayhem!. Sidewalk Chalk Protest and Free Speech

Democracy needs free speech.  

From Marinwood.Nextdoor.com

Clean up? What do you guys think?1d ago

Denise Castellucci from Lucas Valley/Marinwood

7 

First of all, this is a non-destructive form of protest. If this was spray paint I would be upset.

My question is that how would you feel coming to work to this? The workers did not make the plans but are just trying to make a living. My first instinct would to be clean it up so the workers who are powerless in the situation don't have to deal with this.

On the other hand people are obviously upset and want to send a message to those who do make decisions - so I want to respect that. I will leave it to the community to figure this one out.

Btw, I have no real opinion on the work being done.

Shared with Lucas Valley/Marinwood in General

Duncan, Joel, Linda, and 8 others thanked Denise

Paul Brunell  from Lucas Valley/Marinwood1d ago

Where is this? The Marinwood/Miller Creek intersection ? Probably the wrong place to put this. The workers are just being paid by the contract/money allotted. Better to send emails/letters to the county folks who made the decision.

Edited 1d ago

Jody thanked Paul

Jody Morales from Lucas Valley/Marinwood1d ago

I think it is a perfectly harmless - and effective - display of taxpayer dissatisfaction. I find it totally understandable, but that's me!
I would prefer it if people contacted their supervisors (and all other elected officials) and complained, commented and questioned in advance, but most don't until it's too late. Involvement is the only way to get and keep things on track.
Bravo to the brave resident!

Linda thanked Jody

Jody Morales from Lucas Valley/Marinwood1d ago

By the way, the workers might well agree with the chalked sentiments. It shouldn't bother them in the least.

Denise thanked Jody

Ashleigh Strasheim from Lucas Valley/Marinwood1d ago

I think it's a little messed up. I mean I get that this person might think it's a waste but what about the disabled people in our neighborhood who can now safely cross the road. Not sure if this person noticed that that place had no wheel chair ramp before. Actually our neighborhood isn't very wheel chair friendly. I have many times seen a little girl in our area have to use people's driveways to cross the street ect. Just a thought.

Jill, Rebekah, Leigh, and 2 others thanked Ashleigh

Erika Gendreau from Lucas Valley/Marinwood1d ago

I find it obnoxious and ineffective. Contact your County officials if you don't like it, but don't vandalize public areas.

Jill, Mike, and Christian thanked Erika

Mike Ralston from Lucas Valley/Marinwood1d ago

This is RIDICULOUS and DESTRUCTIVE! At a minimum, it has to be cleaned up and in addition it is demeaning and insulting to the workers (who have no role at all in the decision-making or the construction plans). It also does NOT send a message to the designers or decision-makers (who probably will never see it

Jill and Christian thanked Mike

Mike Ralston from Lucas Valley/Marinwood1d ago

I say BOOO!!! To whoever did it. Incredibly bad taste and ineffective

Christian thanked Mike

Linda Barnello from Lucas Valley/Marinwood1d ago

No opinion from me. I just copied this article from parenting.com.........

""Susan Mortensen of Richmond, Virginia was reprimanded by a James River Park officer when she allowed her four-year-old daughter to color rocks with sidewalk chalk. Ralph White, park manager, told news reporters that chalk is no different than spray paint, and is akin to any other type of vandalism, saying, “It doesn’t matter what the medium is. It’s offensive”.

On Tuesday, a judge ruled to dismiss charges, after sentencing Mortensen to 50 hours community service. Additionally, Mortensen is expected to pay a fine of $325, and faces a ban from all city parks. In response, angry protesters drew on the courthouse sidewalk with chalk. Many feel comparing chalk, which washes away with water, to graffiti is going too far.

Is drawing on rocks or the sidewalk with chalk vandalism? Do you let your kids use sidewalk chalk? "". ........end of article

Just curious - does anyone know the Marin County law about writing with chalk on sidewalks?

Jody and Leigh thanked Linda

Editor's Note: After seeing the ridiculous outrage from some of our more notable citizens,  I had to see it myself at the corner of Marinwood Ave and Miller Creek Rd. Some guardian of public morals and decency rubbed out the offending chalk protest.  Naturally, as a defender of free speech,  I had to add some comments of my own.

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