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Preserving Marin's Special Character & Preventing Segregation
Many of us have become downhearted about the future of our county as we have faced a continued, seemingly unstoppable onslaught of a push to urbanize:
- the Larkspur Station Area plan attempted (but failed to) introduce a preposterous number of units and a hotel to an area already facing dire traffic levels;
- the volunteering of neighborhoods like Strawberry, Terra Linda and others as "Priority Development Areas" without outreach or consultation which have taken years of effort by the community to repeal;
- the spin being faced in Grady Ranch backed by a billionaire seeking to be embraced as a hero, while portraying Marin residents as villains
Has the Supreme Court Now Given Urbanization Advocates a Trump Card?
What might be perceived as the latest setback is the Supreme Court's decision to affirm “disparate impact” as a legal argument in order to put an end to situations where zoning promotes segregation.
At first I was concerned that this may have been another end around like using the SMART train to impose housing, or volunteering neighborhoods as PDAs - that it would be used as a golden ticket by developers to build more WinCups - but instead Marin should support this and face up to a challenge that deserves our County's finest thinking.
Solving for Preventing Segregation & Preserving Our Special County
There are genuine ways we as a county can achieve all of our important goals - however to achieve this we must overlook and get past the great negativity, polarization and obstructionism that's been injected into the debate.
The challenge that Marin must face and succeed at is:
- supporting the recent decision by the Supreme Court
AND at the same time:
- maintaining quality of life for new and existing residents;
- prevent the loss if its character and charm;
- avoid overwhelming areas with traffic or parking issues;
- minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, where cost effective and the burden is reasonable, not onerous;
- ensuring we preserve our tax base, with public spending living within its means.
We need to work together to preserve and encourage racial and social integration, and equal opportunity for all, while ensuring that we don't push up tax rates that impact those on lower incomes the most and undermine our shared quality of life.
There is a Solution, We Have Many Options...
Our mission needs to be to achieve *all* of these goals - this can be achieved through careful planning. Rather than the knee jerk of zoning large, dense apartment buildings, which is not the implication of the changes, I would suggest that there's a better path for our county...
- removing barriers to second units;
- allowing homes on larger lots to be subdivided;
- supporting distributed (not concentrated) infill;
- maintaining bulk limits that mean homeowners can stop worrying about another WinCup appearing on their block;
- promoting the adoption of residential solar which significantly abates emissions, while often saving or not costing homeowners money
- spending our transportation dollars wisely, assessing these projects based on genuine metrics such as dollars to remove 1,000 cars from peak commute or dollars to abate a ton of CO2 (not chasing fantasies or "sounds right" science).
Instead of reacting to this endless onslaught to push for large apartment buildings, and negativity being injected into online comments we should be inspired as a county and reinvigorated it with aspirations - seeking a better path to the future of Marin county.
There is a way - and our challenge is to find it.