Saturday, May 24, 2014
"Contribute or Else"- A history of land use/politics in Marinwood
Cameron Case and Walter Dods explain the casual nature of the Marinwood Association. It was essentially a group of self-appointed residents that claimed to represent the community whenever there was a crisis. Former CSD Director Walter Dods explains that Susan Adams forced "contributions" to the Marin Collaborative from Marinwood CSD and Marinwood Association. Now through the recent revelations from the the five "Friends of Marinwood Village" (Kathy Gaines, Cameron Case, Jon Hammond, Bruce Anderson and Robert Pendolay) that not just a few hundred dollars was donated.
In fact $3000 came from the CSD and $2000 from the Marinwood Association. We found in September 2013, that the Marinwood Association had less than 20 paid members and did no accounting.
It begs the question, "how did the Marinwood Association, with no assets, and a few members come up with $2000 to "give" to Susan Adam's Marinwood Village Collaborative? Did it come from an outside source? Why?
Bruce Anderson, former CSD director and Vice President of the Marinwood Association surely knows....
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| Bruce Anderson |
Saturday Night Movies:
The Beast Inside from Drew Christie on Vimeo.
Max Cooper - Supine from Tom Geraedts on Vimeo.
Audax Alpine Classic from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo.
THE LAST MEMORY (short film) from Oliver Latta on Vimeo.
Texas Six from Victory Journal on Vimeo.
One Hour of San Diego Surfing Time Collapsed: San Diego Study #4 from Cy Kuckenbaker on Vimeo.
Portrait of my grandfather : 80 and still cycling from Florent Piovesan on Vimeo.
Ulrich Forman - I Got You from Garnier/LeGallo on Vimeo.
Friday, May 23, 2014
A New Parking App That's Virtually Guaranteed to Stir Up Controversy
A New Parking App That's Virtually Guaranteed to Stir Up Controversy
MonkeyParking lets users bid for street parking spaces occupied by other drivers.
Say you've been circling around downtown for 20 minutes, hunting for a street parking spot — and failing. At that point, you can keep circling, give up and find a garage, or vow never to take your car into that part of the city again.
In San Francisco and Rome, at least, there’s now another option, and it's decidedly controversial. With MonkeyParking, an audacious new mobile app from Italy, you can bid for a parking spot already occupied by somebody else. Here’s how it works.
To find parking options, you first drop a pin on the map to broadcast your request for spots nearby and then select how much you’re willing to pay — currently the options start at $5 and go up to $20. People who’ve listed their parked cars on the app will get a notification that someone wants their spot. At that point, they can either accept the bid right away, wait a bit to see if there are higher bids, or ignore it completely if they’re not ready to leave.
In San Francisco last month, MonkeyParking co-founder and CEO Paolo Dobrowolny rented a car to personally test out the service. He put out a request for parking in the SOMA district and offered $5. His bid was promptly accepted by someone who'd been getting ready to leave work. From this sample scenario, you can imagine, say, people listing their parked cars as they prepare to leave a restaurant or the gym.
The app, currently only available for iOS devices, launched in San Francisco last month and in Rome about ten days ago. Though the app is not taking any commissions during this beta stage, eventually the business model is to take a percentage of successful bids.
So far, MonkeyParking has triggered no shortage of backlash — there are complaints that it’s partial to the rich, that it would encourage parking spot "squatters," that it, quite frankly, creates shady profits off public property.
Dobrowolny is unfazed. He argues MonkeyParking doesn't broker parking spaces themselves, but rather the valuable information that somebody is just about to leave a spot. In other words, the meters will still be fed, but the app gives parked drivers an incentive to sync up with drivers desperate for a spot right now.
This sort of parking space optimization, Dobrowolny argues, can reduce the time people spend circling the blocks, and as result, cuts down on traffic, fuel consumption, and pollution as well.
Dobrowolny thinks his team will also be able to enforce fair behavior. They'd observe for suspicious patterns — i.e. the same person is engaging in the same actions in one space in a short timespan — and remove the "cheaters." Once more data is available, they can also regulate users with a rating system.
While the bidding system certainly favors those with more money to spare, it’s also how MonkeyParking plans to gather data on how much various parking spaces are really worth at different times of the day. With that information, Dobrowolny says MonkeyParking could, for example, run an algorithm that automatically generates bids.
MonkeyParking is still taking shape and there’s a lot more fine-tuning to be done. Dobrowolny says that compared to earlier iterations of the app tested in Rome over the last year, the current approach is getting much more user engagement — about 65 percent of people who downloaded the app are listing their cars on the map. But he says not all of those people are following through and accepting bids just yet.
Last week, MonkeyParking launched a "contest" that lets people vote for the next city to get the service. So far, New York City has the most votes, followed by Boston, and then locations dispersed around the world.
Meanwhile, both the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office and Municipal Transportation Agency are still trying to figure out how to respond. A spokesperson for the SFMTA says they're "assessing the concerns and determining the most appropriate approach." And according to a spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office, evaluating the legality of this service will be a long-term process.
At this rate, MonkeyParking could gain traction before confronting any real efforts at regulation — that is, assuming the parking space "hand-offs" transpire as smoothly as users will expect it to. Knowing how unpredictable road and traffic conditions can be, that's hard to guarantee.
Top image: Moreno Novello / Shutterstock.com
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Dick Spotswood: Fairfax housing flap is not Tea Party politics
Dick Spotswood: Fairfax housing flap is not Tea Party politics
VOLUNTEERS recently gathered almost 1,000 signatures in Fairfax to overturn the town's new zoning ordinance. That law, subsequently repealed by the Town Council, would have permitted building 142 housing units in the community's downtown.
In a town with barely 2,000 registered voters, that's a substantial outpouring against what some perceived as enabling excessive concentrated growth.
While there are two sides to debate over the zoning law's merits, few dispute that town staff and the council majority were deficient in effectively communicating their message. The large number of signatures on the referendum petition is revealing about those opposing urbanization of the east side of Marin.
These folks are occasionally labeled by some high-density housing activists as "Tea Partyites." That slam doesn't wash.
Fairfax is Marin's most politically left-leaning municipality and one of California's most progressive towns. It would be amazing if there are 20 Tea Party members in the whole place.
A leader behind the referendum is former Fairfax mayor Frank Egger. Over four decades on the Town Council, Egger earned a reputation as one of the North Bay's most progressive elected officials.
Then there's Bob Silvestri. He was the speaker at Saturday's gathering attended by almost 425 residents upset about Larkspur's SMART Station Area Plan. The Mill Valleyan is at the intellectual center of efforts to thwart regional agencies' efforts to encourage "transit-centered" high-density housing.
Silvestri, who spent most of his professional career as an affordable housing developer, is a certifiable progressive on most issues.
There are some conservatives opposing the regional agencies' housing initiative, but the effort to retain Marin's small-town character is locally based and nonpartisan. Similarly, there are both liberal Democrats and big business-oriented Republicans backing high-density development.
The demonization that most citizens opposed to densification are Tea Party acolytes is just spin. While it's fair to disagree with those wishing to preserve small-town Marin, this stunt quickly collapses under examination.
Minnesota Fights Back "Smart" Growth: Turning the Twin Cities Into Sim City
Opinion
Turning the Twin
Cities Into Sim City
The Metropolitan
Council's plans include making sure there is a proper mix of races and incomes
in each suburb.
By
Katherine Kersten
May
19, 2014 7:03 p.m. ET
Wall
Street Journal
Minneapolis Here in the Twin Cities, a handful of unelected bureaucrats are gearing up to impose their vision of the ideal society on the nearly three million residents of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro region. According to the urban planners on the city's Metropolitan Council, far too many people live in single family homes, have neighbors with similar incomes and skin color, and contribute to climate change by driving to work. They intend to change all that with a 30-year master plan called "Thrive MSP 2040."
The Met Council, as it's known here, was founded in the 1960s to coordinate regional infrastructure—in essence, to make sure that sewers and roads meet up. Over the years, its power to allocate funds and control planning has expanded. Now, under Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton—who appointed all 17 current members—the council intends to play Sim City with residents' lives.
Thrive MSP 2040 is part of a nationwide movement called "regionalism." Regional planning of infrastructure is important, of course. But regionalism, as an ideology, is about shifting power away from local elected officials and re-engineering society on behalf of "equity" and "sustainability." According to regionalist guru David Rusk, author of the book "Cities Without Suburbs," federal programs that promote regionalism should strive to produce "racially and economically integrated and environmentally sustainable regions."
While minority residents have been streaming into the Twin Cities' suburbs for the past 15 years, the Met Council wants to make sure there is a proper race-and-income mix in each. Thus it recently mapped every census tract in the 2,800 square-mile, seven-county region by race, ethnicity and income. The purpose was to identify "racially concentrated areas of poverty" and "high opportunity clusters." The next step is for the council to lay out what the region's 186 municipalities must do to disperse poverty throughout the metro area.
The council has provided few details, beyond noting that it will emphasize construction of low-income housing in "higher-income areas." But the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development—the source of the $5 million planning grant used to fund the racial mapping—says that mapping is intended, in part, to identify suburban land-use and zoning practices that allegedly deny opportunity and create "barriers" for low-income and minority people. Under its forthcoming "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" rule, HUD will provide communities with "nationally uniform data" of what it views as an appropriate racial, ethnic and economic mix. [Editor's Note: Marin County entered into an agreement with HUD and is currently implementing its plan especially in Marinwood-Lucas Valley due to Susan Adam's advocacy]
Local governments will have to "take meaningful actions" to further the goals identified.
The Met Council has declared that "transit-oriented development" will be the guiding principle of regional development. To this end, the Thrive plan instructs the region's municipalities to consider "travel modes other than the car at all levels of development." The strategy has two parts. First, the council wants all future housing and economic development within "easy walking distance" (one-half mile) of major transit stops—primarily in the urban core and inner-ring suburbs. There tax dollars (mostly from people who live elsewhere) will be lavished on high-density housing, bike and pedestrian amenities and subsidized retail shops.
The Thrive plan also will pour public funds into mass transit while virtually ignoring congestion relief on highways. The Twin Cities region is projected to have just $52 million available annually from 2014 to 2022 for highway congestion relief, according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Yet the Met Council intends to spend at least $1.7 billion on a single light-rail project, with more rail transit to follow.
The Thrive plan's most radical element may be to evaluate all future development policies through the "lens" of climate change. Over time, this could give the council a license to dramatically remake the entire metro area.
One former member of the Met Council told me that in the not-so-distant future local governments seeking approval of a new sewer line may first have to meet onerous "carbon footprint" dictates. The council apparently views herding people into dense urban conclaves and restricting their use of cars as the key to reducing greenhouse gases. Yet an exhaustive report by McKinsey & Co. in 2007 found that neither driving less nor densification is necessary and that technological advances, such as fuel-economy improvements, can achieve sufficient reductions.
Regional planning is on the march in other states. Leading examples include "Plan Bay Area" in the nine-county San Francisco Bay region and "Seven/50" in southeast Florida. The movement is getting a strong assist from the Obama administration, which is aggressively promoting such plans through new HUD rules and grants like the one awarded the Met Council.
So far, Twin Cities-area mayors and city councils have not mounted organized resistance to the Thrive plan. Yet even officials in inner-ring suburbs such as Brooklyn Park, which hope to benefit from light rail, are troubled by the plan's aggressive densification provisions. Many officials in outer-ring counties such as Scott and Anoka worry their communities will disproportionately shoulder the plan's costs while getting little back in infrastructure and public services. Fearing retaliation, many local officials hesitate to speak out against a Met Council power grab that will undermine their ability to direct their own communities' future.
Once implementation begins, however, Twin Cities residents will likely realize that Thrive MSP 2040's centralized decision-making and Orwellian appeals to "equity" and "sustainability" are a serious threat to their democratic traditions of individual liberty and self-government. Let's hope that realization comes sooner rather than later.
Ms. Kersten is a senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis.
Copyright 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Even Santa Monica Citizens are in an UPROAR over the "Manhattanization" of their City.
Santa Monica City Council scraps Bergamot Transit Village plan
Following community outcry and a successful referendum campaign, the Santa Monica City Council has rescinded a controversial development agreement for one of the city's largest projects.
The Bergamot Transit Village — a 765,000-square-foot office, residential and retail development near a coming Expo Line rail stop — was narrowly approved in February after years of debate. But when council members were forced to decide Tuesday between putting the project's fate on the ballot or repealing the development agreement, they voted 4 to1 to kill the plan. Two council members abstained.
"The only way to negotiate effectively for the best possible developments for our community is to sometimes be willing to say no," said Councilman Kevin McKeown, who voted to ax the agreement. "With the successful referendum drive, Santa Monica residents forced the council majority to say no."
A Hines representative Wednesday said the property owners had no comment on the council vote.
At the City Council meeting and in statements after the vote, elected officials condemned the divisions the project has generated within the community.
Former Mayor and now Assemblyman Richard Hershel Bloom (D-Santa Monica) weighed in Wednesday, saying that "fear-mongering, misinformation and even bullying around development issues in Santa Monica are reflected in the decision to kill this project and have left our city with a black eye."
Councilwoman Gleam Davis — the lone official to change her vote — said she feared that putting the development agreement on the ballot would invite "bloodletting."
And Councilman Bob Holbrook, who abstained from the vote, characterized the rhetoric about the project as "extremely nasty" and argued that some change was inevitable.
"The vast majority of activists want zero" growth, Holbrook said. "They don't want another car, they don't want another person in Santa Monica."
Neighborhood groups and activist organizations united with unusual quickness and force to fight the Hines project.
Former City Council candidate Armen Melkonians created an online platform called Residocracy.org and used the website to help sign up volunteer signature gatherers for the referendum campaign. Santa Monica for Renters' Rights, the city's only major political party, and Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City came out in support of the referendum.
Collectively, campaign organizers managed to gather enough signatures to qualify a referendum on the project. City officials said more than 13,500 signatures were collected, though the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office stopped counting once it had verified 6,800.
The victory for slow-growth advocates comes as the city has found itself in the midst of a growth spurt. As of late last year, officials said more than 30 projects in the pipeline could add nearly 3 million square feet in new residential, office and retail space.
The Hines 26th Street project was slated to fill an old Paper Mate pen factory near the Bergamot Station Arts Center. It was the largest development in a list of recent projects compiled by the city in November. McKeown said he could not think of a bigger project in the city's recent history.
Proponents said it would add necessary housing next to transit and presented a better option than leaving the space vacant or allowing the land owners to eventually reoccupy the abandoned site.
The Bergamot Transit Village — a 765,000-square-foot office, residential and retail development near a coming Expo Line rail stop — was narrowly approved in February after years of debate. But when council members were forced to decide Tuesday between putting the project's fate on the ballot or repealing the development agreement, they voted 4 to1 to kill the plan. Two council members abstained.
"The only way to negotiate effectively for the best possible developments for our community is to sometimes be willing to say no," said Councilman Kevin McKeown, who voted to ax the agreement. "With the successful referendum drive, Santa Monica residents forced the council majority to say no."
A Hines representative Wednesday said the property owners had no comment on the council vote.
Former Mayor and now Assemblyman Richard Hershel Bloom (D-Santa Monica) weighed in Wednesday, saying that "fear-mongering, misinformation and even bullying around development issues in Santa Monica are reflected in the decision to kill this project and have left our city with a black eye."
Councilwoman Gleam Davis — the lone official to change her vote — said she feared that putting the development agreement on the ballot would invite "bloodletting."
And Councilman Bob Holbrook, who abstained from the vote, characterized the rhetoric about the project as "extremely nasty" and argued that some change was inevitable.
"The vast majority of activists want zero" growth, Holbrook said. "They don't want another car, they don't want another person in Santa Monica."
Neighborhood groups and activist organizations united with unusual quickness and force to fight the Hines project.
Former City Council candidate Armen Melkonians created an online platform called Residocracy.org and used the website to help sign up volunteer signature gatherers for the referendum campaign. Santa Monica for Renters' Rights, the city's only major political party, and Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City came out in support of the referendum.
Collectively, campaign organizers managed to gather enough signatures to qualify a referendum on the project. City officials said more than 13,500 signatures were collected, though the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office stopped counting once it had verified 6,800.
The victory for slow-growth advocates comes as the city has found itself in the midst of a growth spurt. As of late last year, officials said more than 30 projects in the pipeline could add nearly 3 million square feet in new residential, office and retail space.
The Hines 26th Street project was slated to fill an old Paper Mate pen factory near the Bergamot Station Arts Center. It was the largest development in a list of recent projects compiled by the city in November. McKeown said he could not think of a bigger project in the city's recent history.
Proponents said it would add necessary housing next to transit and presented a better option than leaving the space vacant or allowing the land owners to eventually reoccupy the abandoned site.
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