EMERGENCY ACTION NEEDED: Please sign this petition to save Community Plans ASAP!

This petition is a follow up effort to bolster the 14 organizations and 185+ individuals whose signatures have already been sent to the Supervisors.

On January 24th, the Marin County Board of Supervisors adopted the 2023-2031 Marin County Housing Element Update (the County's housing plan) and various Countywide Plan amendments related to the Housing Element.

Among other consequences, these amendments needlessly eviscerate Community Plans by rendering them unenforceable, leaving areas open to development with minimal controls. 

Most importantly, there is no requirement by the State of California that community plans must be weakened in order to achieve a compliant Housing Element.

Community and environmental organizations, which are located within the jurisdictions of the 24 Marin County Community Plans, are coordinating an effort to maintain the integrity of community plans.  This petition applies to all 24 community plans.

The Supervisors can still reverse their mistake. 

Community plans are vital to guide the Marin County Planning Department because each community has different physical aspects, goals, and desires. These plans were meticulously studied and drafted by local residents over many years.  They are extremely valued documents that state community goals, objectives, policies and implementation programs relative to the current and foreseeable future conservation and development issues facing each community.

If you care about preserving the environment, habitat and wildlife; protecting public health and safety; maintaining views; controlling traffic congestion; carefully planning for development; keeping our small-town/semi-rural/rural neighborhood character; and safeguarding a host of other treasured aspects of living in Marin, then you will also care about saving community plans.

For example, the Tamalpais Area Community Plan (TACP) governs Tam Valley, Almonte, Homestead, and Muir Woods Park.  Among other directives, the plan spells out specific dimension limitations for most of the commercial/mixed-use sites in Tam Valley and Almonte. Accordingly, the commercial/mixed-use properties on the East Side of Shoreline are limited to 15 feet high, in order to preserve treasured Bothin Marsh's habitat and wildlife as well as maintain scenic views of the marsh and the bay throughout the Community.   The TACP is the only place this height limit is found. 

This situation repeats itself in the context of all of the community plans.  If the Countywide Plan amendments prevail, then the careful, location-specific community planning would be replaced with the very general, unspecific County zoning.  These local plans are the sole planning documents for many critical properties.

Please sign this petition immediately to reverse these Countywide Plan text amendments in order to retain the preferred longstanding language regarding community plans and preserve the essential integrity of these vital plans.  

THE PETITION:

Reverse the Needless Destruction of Community Plans in Marin County

We, the signatories of this message, urgently request the Marin County Board of Supervisors to:

REVERSE:  

Reverse quickly the Housing Element ordinance amendments you approved Tuesday night, January 24th, which needlessly eviscerate the 24 community plans of Marin County.

WHY?:

You can achieve a compliant Housing Element without destroying community plans.

The weakening of community plans seems to be a preference of the staff, not a requirement of the Housing Element process.  The county staff have ignored three distinct rounds of direction from County Planning Commissioners and Board of Supervisors that community plans should only be modified to the extent necessary to create a compliant Housing Element.

We request that you use accurate information, independent legal advice, clear eyed resolve, and the diligent work we expect of full-time elected representatives.

The community plans are the product of thoughtful processes and generous work by community members over the years.  They reflect very local conditions including protection of sensitive environmental conditions.  When changes are made to them, those changes should be part of a careful process. 

We wish to go on record that an important, precise question has not been answered by the Supervisors or by the professional staff despite requests from Michael Gallagher, President of the Seminary Neighborhood Association.  That question is the following:  

“Can Marin County submit a compliant Housing Element which does not weaken community plans?”  

Our legal counsel answers this precise question with a clear, “yes”.  There is no requirement by the state of California to downgrade community plans.

In a letter addressed to the Board of Supervisors dated January 23, 2023, land use attorney Riley Hurd wrote:

“…The real question is: why is this edit proposed at all? We already know that state law supersedes local regulations.

It’s also a fact that housing projects may avail themselves of waivers from any local standard that precludes the project from reaching its maximum density.

So, what is the point here other than to try and eliminate Community Plans in a roundabout way?

Please reject these amendments, as the stated goal of allowing housing is already covered by state law.”

In order to retain the longstanding language of the Marin Countywide Plan regarding Community Plans, we request that the following specific revisions be made to the adopted 2023-2031 Marin County Housing Element and related Amendments to the Marin Countywide Plan. 

Please delete the following newly adopted text amendments to the Marin Countywide Plan (CWP), which would be included in the CWP under "How to Read the Countywide Plan" p. 1.4-3 and in "Land Use Categories" p. 1.5-3:

DELETE: “No provision of the Countywide Plan, including its community plans, may be applied by the County in a manner that conflicts with State law, or the policies and programs contained in the Housing Element and/or the ordinances implementing those policies. ...When reading, interpreting, and implementing the community plans, none of their provisions can conflict with the Countywide Plan.”

DELETE: "For residential and mixed-use projects where there are land use designation or development density and floor area ratio differences, the Countywide Plan shall prevail."

The above text amendments to the Marin Countywide Plan must be discarded. In addition, please return the following language to the Countywide Plan:

RETAIN/RETURN: "Where there are differences in the level of specificity between a policy in the Community Plan and a policy in the Countywide Plan, the document with the more specific provision shall prevail." 

In summary, Marin County can have a compliant Housing Element without harming community plans.  If you acknowledge this, the question becomes why destroy 24 community plans when doing so is unnecessary?

We assert that staff preference for what they consider a “better” Housing Element is not a compelling reason.  Staff’s persistence in ignoring Planning Commission and Supervisor direction should not be acceptable to the voters’ representatives.

You each run the risk of becoming a “Supervisor Who Destroyed 24 Community Plans” (when doing so was neither required nor necessary).

Thank you for your attention to this urgently important matter.