Marinwood approves SPENDING taxes but WHY?

Marinwood Passed approval to spend taxes again on Tuesday, March 3rd.   The CSD claims it is not a NEW tax but merely approves spending money they are collecting.  Think about this for a second.  What do you think would happen if they did NOT receive approval to spend the money?  Maybe they would be forced to defend their expenditures.

Here is some of the colossal waste that Marinwood engages in

1.) Lawsuit defense when the CSD refused to pay for landslide repair on the property of 50+ year residents Alan Miller and his wife.  (They are are in settlement talks now MINUS our legal defense costs)

2.) A highly unusual consulting contract with former CSD politician Bill Hansell that is FIVE TIMES original estimate with NO PERFORMANCE criteria or budget limit.  They refuse to even discuss the project cost...   This is corruption, mismanagement or whatever you want to call it... It screws taxpayers and people need to be held accountable.

3.) Overstaffing at the CSD.  We have the largest payroll in history.  New full time staff positions have been created from former part time positions.

4.) Secretive Business dealings with special events that never seem to make any money despite large revenues.

5.) 80% of Marinwood Fire Department calls are served in the City of San Rafael but we pay 100% of the cost PLUS a management fee.  Marinwood Taxpayers are also responsible for 100% of the retirement liability.  It is a grossly unfair deal for taxpayers but the Marinwood CSD refuse to address it.

Marinwood CSD Park and Recreation 2/25/2020 Ponti Rd Bike Trail

A $60 Billion Housing Grab by Wall Street

A $60 Billion Housing Grab by Wall Street

Hundreds of thousands of single-family homes are now in the hands of giant companies — squeezing renters for revenue and putting the American dream even further out of reach.




By Francesca Mari
Published March 4, 2020Updated March 5, 2020




Chad Ellingwood wasn’t really in the market for a home in the summer of 2006. But when his best friend came across an intriguing listing in Woodland Hills — a bedroom community in Los Angeles County’s San Fernando Valley — the two men decided to visit on a whim.

Entering the property beneath the canopy of a grand deodar, Ellingwood, a big man with a gentle presence, felt as if he had been transported to a ranch house in Northern California, much like one he often visited as a child, all old growth and overgrown greenery — olive trees, citrus trees, sycamores and redwoods. He and his friend meandered past a pond to an inviting teal house built in 1958, “a whimsical masterpiece,” Ellingwood told me. Inside there was a “captain’s quarters” — a room designed to look like the hull of a boat with a built-in water bed and drawers — and numerous stained-glass windows that the couple who owned it had made themselves. The pièce de résistance depicted a faerie woman with flowing hair whose fingers turned into peacock feathers. Behind the house were a couple of small buildings, one of which was office-size — a meditation “Zen den,” Ellingwood thought. The other was an A-frame, Swiss-chalet-style granny unit above the garage, where the owner displayed a toy train collection.

“The house was not in amazing shape,” Ellingwood said. “It needed some help. But I loved it. I wanted it immediately.”

One of Ellingwood’s goals had always been to buy a house by the time he turned 30 — a birthday that unceremoniously came and went six months earlier. When Ellingwood began speaking to lenders, he realized he could easily get a loan, even two; this was the height of the bubble, when mortgage brokers were keen to generate mortgages, even risky ones, because the debt was being bundled together, securitized and spun into a dizzying array of bonds for a hefty profit. The house was $840,000. He put down $15,000 and sank the rest of his savings into a $250,000 bedroom addition and kitchen remodel, reasoning that this would increase the home’s value.


Suddenly adulthood was upon him. He married on New Year’s Eve, and his wife gave birth to their first child, a son, in April. When his 88-year-old grandfather, an emeritus professor of electrical engineering at the University of Houston, had a bad fall, Ellingwood urged him to move into the house for sale just across his backyard. The grandfather bought the house with his daughter, Ellingwood’s mother, and the first thing they did was tear down the fence between the two properties, creating one big family compound. In 2009, Ellingwood’s older sister bought a house around the corner.

But shortly after the birth of Ellingwood’s second son, in June 2010, his marriage fell apart. He and his wife each sued for sole custody. To pay his lawyer, he planned to refinance his house, and his grandfather advanced him his inheritance. By 2012, Ellingwood had paid his lawyer more than $80,000, and in the chaos of fighting for his children, he stopped making his mortgage payments. He consulted with several professionals, who urged him to file for bankruptcy protection so that he could get an automatic stay preventing the sale of his house.

Unlock more free articles.Create an account or log in


In May 2012, Ellingwood was driving his two boys to the beach, desperate to make the most of his limited time with them, when he got a call. He pulled over and, with cars whizzing by and his boys babbling excitedly in the back seat, learned that he had lost his house. He had dispatched a friend to stop the auction with a check for $27,000 — the amount he was behind on his mortgage — but there was nothing to be done. Because Ellingwood began to file for bankruptcy and then didn’t go through with it, a lien was put on his house, his “vortex of love” as he called it, that precluded him from settling his debt. The house sold within a couple of minutes for $486,000, which was $325,000 less than what he owed on it.

In the months after, though, Ellingwood was graced with what seemed like a bit of luck. The company that bought his home offered to sell it back to him for $100,000 more than it paid to acquire it. He told the company, Strategic Acquisitions, that he just needed a little time to get together a down payment. In the meantime, the company asked him to sign a two-page rental agreement with a two-page addendum.

[The illustration above was this week magazine’s cover. See how the cover came together.]

It was clear from the beginning that there was something a little unusual about his new landlords. Instead of mailing his rent checks to a management company, men would swing by to pick them up. Within a few months, Ellingwood noticed that one of the checks he had written for $2,000 wasn’t accounted for on his rental ledger, though it had been cashed. He called and emailed and texted to resolve the problem, and finally emailed to say that he wouldn’t pay more rent until the company could explain where his $2,000 went. For more than three months, he withheld rent, waiting for a response. Instead, the company posted an eviction notice to his door.

Ellingwood hired a lawyer and reported to the Santa Monica courthouse on his court date with all of his cashed checks in chronological order. When the judge called his case, the lawyer for Strategic Acquisitions asked to have a moment to review the paperwork. After marking each of Ellingwood’s checks off the accounting ledger, the lawyer concluded that the company had, in fact, erred. Strategic Acquisitions had grown so big so fast that it could barely keep its properties straight.

But it would only get bigger. Strategic Acquisitions was but one of several companies in Los Angeles County, and one of dozens in the United States, that hit on the same idea after the financial crisis: load up on foreclosed properties at a discount of 30 to 50 percent and rent them out. Rather than protecting communities and making it easy for homeowners to restructure bad mortgages or repair their credit after succumbing to predatory loans, the government facilitated the transfer of wealth from people to private-equity firms. By 2016, 95 percent of the distressed mortgages on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s books were auctioned off to Wall Street investors without any meaningful stipulations, and private-equity firms had acquired more than 200,000 homes in desirable cities and middle-class suburban neighborhoods, creating a tantalizing new asset class: the single-family-rental home. The companies would make money on rising home values while tenants covered the mortgages. When Ellingwood reached out to Strategic Acquisitions in the winter of 2013 to buy his house, it was no longer interested in selling. Ellingwood asked again a year later; the company didn’t reply.

Over the next seven years, Strategic Acquisitions would turn over management to Colony Capital, and Colony’s real estate holdings would merge with a series of companies, culminating in the Blackstone subsidiary Invitation Homes, making Invitation Homes the largest single-family-rental company in America, with 82,500 homes at its height — and 79,505 homes after Blackstone sold its shares at the end of last year. Ellingwood, however, could hardly distinguish among the various L.L.C.s he paid rent to: Strategic Property Management, Colony American Homes, Starwood Waypoint, Invitation Homes. The offices changed cities, downsized staff, hiked rents and imposed increasingly punitive fees. Ellingwood was required to submit his rent in different ways — online, certified mail, cashier’s check, in person — with slightly different rules, by the 1st, by the 3rd. The leases grew in length from four pages to 18 to 43 as the companies doubled down on strictures and transferred more responsibilities — mold remediation, landscaping, carbon-monoxide detectors — onto the renter.

Ellingwood didn’t know it at the time, but his story was to be the story of millions of renters around the country, the beginning of a downward spiral into the financial industry’s newest scheme to harvest money from housing.

[How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality.]

Wall Street’s latest real estate grab has ballooned to roughly $60 billion, representing hundreds of thousands of properties. In some communities, it has fundamentally altered housing ecosystems in ways we’re only now beginning to understand, fueling a housing recovery without a homeowner recovery. “That’s the big downside,” says Daniel Immergluck, a professor of urban studies at Georgia State University. “During one of the greatest recoveries of land value in the history of the country, from 2010 and 2011 at the bottom of the crisis to now, we’ve seen huge gains in property values, especially in suburbs, and instead of that accruing to many moderate-income and middle-income homeowners, many of whom were pushed out of the homeownership market during the crisis, that land value has accrued to these big companies and their shareholders.”




ImageChad Ellingwood in his home in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. After his home was acquired by a private-equity firm, he was soon paying more in rent than he had paid for his first and second mortgage combined.Credit...Damon Casarez for The New York Times

FABLE:THE WOLF AND THE LEAN DOG

THE WOLF AND THE LEAN DOG

A WOLF prowling near a village one evening met a Dog. It happened to be a very lean and bony Dog, and Master Wolf would have turned up his nose at such meager fare had he not been more hungry than usual. So. he began to edge toward the Dog, while the Dog backed away.

"Let me remind your lordship," said the Dog, his words interrupted now and then as he dodged a snap of the Wolf's teeth, "how unpleasant it would be to eat me [49] now. Look at my ribs. I am nothing but skin and bone. But let me tell you something in private. In a few days my master will give a wedding feast for his only daughter. You can guess how fine and fat I will grow on the scraps from the table. Then is the time to eat me."

The Wolf could not help thinking how nice it would be to have a fine fat Dog to eat instead of the scrawny object before him. So he went away pulling in his belt and promising to return.

Some days later the Wolf came back for the promised feast. He found the Dog in his master's yard, and asked him to come out and be eaten.

"Sir," said the Dog, with a grin, "I shall be delighted to have you eat me. I'll be out as soon as the porter opens the door."

But the "porter" was a huge Dog whom the Wolf knew by painful experience to be very unkind toward wolves. So he decided not to wait and made off as fast as his legs could carry him.

Do not depend on the promises of those whose interest it is to deceive you.

The Horse Shoe Pit will be destroyed for vehicle access.

Here is an illustration of a "hammerhead turn" that the CSD claims will be done everyday in Marinwood Park. Many of us know this as a "three point" turn.  The trucks will back out of the Maintenance Facility and on to the horse shoe pit to turn around.

This of course will wreck the horseshoe pit that the Marinwood CSD claimed would not be harmed in any way and makes a mockery of the Site Plan submitted by the Marinwood CSD that shows a pedestrian path.

In addition Bill Hansell falsely represented this area as a "gravel surface" when in fact it is a soft sandy area to the planning commission and the county .

The Marinwood CSD has paid Bill Hansell an estimated $50k in architects fees before a single thing has been done to the site.  Hansell has a highly unusual fee contract that lacks performance standards and objectives.  It is a sweet deal for the architect but we taxpayers are stuck with the bill

Had we chosen a pre engineered building as specified in the initial plan, the CSD could install a an entire building for the cost of the architects fees so far.

The Marinwood CSD approved this awful fee arrangement and WILL NOT DISCUSS THE BUDGET FOR THE PROJECT.  We believe they fear public outrage if the cost is truly known.

Telling the truth at the Friday Night horseshoe pit with Bill Shea

Bill Shea was elected to the Marinwood CSD in 2015 in hopes that he would use his financial experience to improve the finances of Marinwood CSD.  He has been a disappointment to many

I was walking my dogs tonight like I do every night and started talking to guys at the horse shoe pit. While i am not a player, i usually am seen every Friday.  Bill Shea CSD board member was there as usual.  I loudly asked Bill, “where are you going to relocate the horse shoe pit after you destroy this one with a truck turnaround?”.   Bill was flustered and pretended not to hear me.  I asked again and  he told me to bring it up at the meeting. ( where no one will hear me).  I then escalated and told him that the CSD lied about vehicle access at the planning commission to get the project approved. I have it on tape. Still flustered, then Shea attacked me with a string of profanities.  I backed off and re asserted that he was lying about the horseshoe pit and knows that it will be destroyed.  This rattled a bunch of  guys who were unsure of what was going on and who was stirring up shit. ( it was me.)

No matter.  The truth will come out and Bill Shea will not be able to play dumb.  He is exposed as a double talking  politician of the worst kind. 

The CSD does not have an answer about the “horse shoe pit problem”. They are just going along with the architect Bill Hansell’s lies.  Bill Shea approved Bill Hansell’s unusual  "unlimited fee" contract that we believe exceeds $50,000 which has only produced initial drawings. Hansell has much more to make in this lucrative deal. It its FIVE TIMES initial estimates and is destined to become the COSTLIEST Maintenance Shed in Marin County. 

The Marinwood CSD REFUSES to tell the public how much the project is budgeted for..  Do they even know? Do they care?

Here is the videotape of architect Bill Hansell telling the Marin Planning Commission that trucks will be turning around on the horseshoe pit "only once a day".  Everyone knows that that this area of the park receives lots of traffic during the workday. Landscaping waste will also need to be stored outside the facility where Hansell claims there will be a "pleasant walking path". Poor workflow design is why this White Elephant will fail.

If only we had "adult supervision" on the Marinwood CSD that would stop they lies and ensure proper administration of district affairs.  The men and women of Marinwood need to step up and stop this corrupt madness.

This is the area that Hansell claims is "covered with gravel"  Our truck and trailer will need to drive across the horseshoe pit.
It will be destroyed despite the denial by Bill Shea, Bill Hansell, Eric Dreikosen and others. Poor workflow design of the facility is UNACCEPTABLE.

Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism

Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff wrote a monumental book about the new economic order that is alarming. "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," reveals how the biggest tech companies deal with our data. How do we regain control of our data? What is surveillance capitalism? In this documentary, Zuboff takes the lid off Google and Facebook and reveals a merciless form of capitalism in which no natural resources, but the citizen itself, serves as a raw material. How can citizens regain control of their data? It is 2000, and the dot.com crisis has caused deep wounds. How will startup Google survive the bursting of the internet bubble? Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't know anymore how to turn the tide. By chance, Google discovers that the "residual data" that people leave behind in their searches on the internet is very precious and tradable. This residual data can be used to predict the behavior of the internet user. Internet advertisements can, therefore, be used in a very targeted and effective way. A completely new business model is born: "surveillance capitalism."

Eric Dreikosen advises to Arrest the Public to maintain Civility at CSD Meetings

Unbelievably, Eric Driekosen is recommending armed police presence at public meetings to remove people while ignoring real crimes that have occured in the community center.  After five months of "study" after a April 2019 armed sex attack, Dreikosen has failed to produce a single improvement for the safety of the community.  Who needs this?  Dreikosen is more concerned about "civility" than than an attempted armed rape in the Community Center.

An attempted armed rape of a juvenile in Marinwood Park and STILL NO SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS

Once again, tonight the Marinwood CSD board shows its callousness and incompetence by failing to improve security in Marinwood Park during events and at the recreation center.  All discussion is off the table and quashed by Isabela Perry, CSD Board Member and the rest of the Board during tonight's meeting of the CSD board on December 10, 2019, a full EIGHT MONTHS after a juvenile escaped a perpetrator wielding a stolen handgun..  All board members have children, yet they fail to take even elementary steps to make the Marinwood Center safer.

How utterly, self serving and selfish of the board to ignore the safety of the community.  Jeff Naylor, Isabella Perry, Leah Green, Sivan Oyserman, and Bill Shea are cowards.

The safety lock on bathroom at the pool house does not work and is open 24hours a day.  It was on a timed lock but it has not been working for years.  Here is a photo I took at 9:30 PM after the park had closed at 5 pm

We asked for this small fix to be done but Eric Dreikosen, Marinwood CSD manager did nothing except hide the issue.   

We asked for an inexpensive video surveillance system to be installed to assist police in case of future incidents but the CSD will not even consider it.

Eric Dreikosen, Marinwood CSD manager hid the April 2019 incident from the public until September 2019 and has done NOTHING to improve security since that time.  

Photo of the Marinwood Pool House Bathroom door that has been broken for years despite safety concerns of the public. It is open 24 hours a day and is in a remote location making it an attractant for crime.  Marinwood CSD has the money to fix it but will not.  In April 2019, a juvenile was victim of an attempted rape while attending a party at the facility.  The perpetrator pointed a stolen handgun at her and demanded sex.  Fortunately, the girl escaped unharmed but the trauma of the incident will live with her for a long time.

Shouldn't the district improve safety around the Marinwood Community Center.

Marinwood CSD covers up Sex crime in Marinwood Community Center

Marinwood sex crime suspect sentenced for gun charge

By GARY KLIEN | gklien@marinij.com | Marin Independent Journal


PUBLISHED: August 25, 2019 at 11:43 am | UPDATED: August 25, 2019 at 12:25 pm


A man accused of threatening a teenage girl with a gun during a sexual attack in Marinwood was sentenced to 120 days in jail.

Jordan Adelso Escobar Perez, 19, of San Rafael was arrested in April during a party at the Marinwood Community Center. He and the 16-year-old victim were both guests at the party.

The victim told investigators that a party guest forced himself on her and pointed a gun at her head, according to a case summary filed by the probation department. Eventually she was able to escape by locking herself in a bathroom and calling her mother.

The victim, who only knew the suspect through social media, was able to provide sheriff’s deputies with his first name. Deputies found the suspect at the party and identified him as Escobar. He initially struggled with deputies and had a Glock handgun in his jacket.
Escobar admitted he brandished the unloaded gun but described the girl as the sexual aggressor, according to the probation report. He also said he was intoxicated at the party.

The Marin County District Attorney’s Office charged Escobar with counts that included carrying a stolen firearm, resisting arrest, sexual battery and false imprisonment. Escobar accepted a plea offer and admitted to the felony gun charge and the misdemeanor resisting charge, and the other counts were dismissed.

The plea bargain called for the 120-day jail sentence and five years of probation. Judge Geoffrey Howard sentenced Escobar on Thursday.

“Mr. Escobar is gainfully employed and is taking the case seriously,” said his public defender, Tamara York. “He looks forward to making the best of his probation and using the resources to continue to better his life.”

Editor's Note:

Why are we just learning of this today? Did the Marinwood CSD inform their residents of this serious crime?

According to court records the case was filed on April 10, 2019. The crime likely occured around April 6th. Why did the Marinwood CSD hide this from the public?

Marinwood CSD 2/11/2020 "Everything is fine"

Another meeting of denial, refusal to provide FINANCIAL details of Marinwood Maintenance Facility, and a rosy "audit" provided yearly by outside consultants. The auditor makes and outrageous claim that all is fine when spending has exploded to the highest levels ever and much cash business activity remains unreported. The CSD is involved in legal action with 90 year old couple instead of a settlement. Outrageous abuse of power, hidden liabilities, mismanagement and illegal activities are kept from public view.

Marinwood CSD REJECTS a public gift.

The Marinwood CSD Board and Marin General Manager REJECT a $1500 donation from long time resident Linda Barnello due to their petty war on the public. Linda Barnello has been exceedingly generous to the Marinwood Fire Department over the years. In 2016 she offer to PAY FOR THE MARINWOOD FIRE Department kitchen rehab and the Marinwood CSD REJECTED the gift. Instead a "friend" of several CSD board members and staff was hired for $60,000 to replace some cabinets. The corrupt Marinwood CSD board is shameless but gets away with it because the Marin IJ and the District Attorney refuse to look into corruption. The ENTIRE Marinwood CSD board should be removed from office.