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Bruce Corcoran
Strawberry Cannot Get a Fair Hearing Before the Board of Supervisors
I delivered these remarks about the Bently Holdings application during Open Time for Public Expression at the Board of Supervisors hearing on January 5, 2016. I was the only speaker.
Please read my remarks following this introduction.
Bently Holdings owns the 100,000 square foot office complex known as #1 and #2 Belvedere Place in Strawberry on the hillside above In N Out Burger. The applicant wants to convert about half of the office space from general office use to medical office use.
The majority of Strawberry residents oppose this application because medical office use generates over three times as much vehicular traffic as general office use. The project would generate 1,200 additional trips per day on our already heavily congested roadways and intersections.
In addition, residents oppose it because medical office use is specifically prohibited by our Master Plan and Precise Development Plan, and by a deed restriction. We’ve already considered medical office use in the past, and we rejected it.
However, despite existing laws and our opposition, the Supervisors want to approve this application because Marin General Hospital has expressed interest in renting the space. They have shown extraordinary bias in favor of Marin General Hospital.
Ignoring the weight of evidence to deny the application, the Supervisors have continued the Bently Holdings hearings four times, and this proposal has dragged on and on beyond all boundaries of reasonableness.
Please recognize that none of the Supervisors are fighting to protect the interests of our community. My problem with Supervisor Sears is that she has not held her ground by voting to deny the application. She always capitulates in the end and votes with the other four Supervisors to continue the hearings.
Developments in Strawberry will affect everyone who travels on the Highway 101 corridor. They are not just Strawberry issues
If you want to have an impact on these hearings, then you have to stay informed, write letters to the Supervisors, and attend and speak at public hearings.
No one is fighting for us. We have to fend for ourselves in force and numbers.
The next Board of Supervisors hearing about the Bently Holdings application is Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 1:30 PM at the Civic Center.
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Good Morning. Bruce Corcoran from Strawberry.
At the last Bently Holdings hearing on December 15th, your Staff failed to disclose to the general public a critically important letter from Caltrans.
That letter expressed Caltrans’s complete agreement with the analysis and recommendations in the Peer Review of the W-Trans Traffic Study, which validated even further our concerns about the inaccuracy and inadequacy of the W-Trans study. It also requested that CDA (Community Development Agency) and DPW (Department of Public Works) coordinate more closely with Caltrans than in the past about the appropriate scope of any future traffic studies.
Failure to disclose this new, significant information was a serious breach of public trust because it would have had a direct bearing on the outcome of the hearing. This is a serious matter that your Board must address.
You summoned the Peer Reviewer to attend the hearing at County expense, but then you never even asked him a single question. Instead, you eagerly embraced Marin General’s absurd set of reasons why the W-Trans study is valid, when everyone else who has reviewed the study—including Caltrans, the City of Mill Valley, your own Staff, and the residents of Strawberry--have discredited it.
The applicant of record is Bently Holdings, not Marin General. The applicant requested a decision by your Board at the last hearing based on all of the information that had been submitted. But in an extraordinary display of domination of your Board, Supervisor Kinsey then said, despite your request for a decision today, I move that we continue the hearing until a date certain in February, and the rest of you fell in line and voted unanimously to continue the hearing.
This will be the third time that your Board has instructed the applicant to fulfill a list of requirements by a date certain, but the applicant has failed to comply each time. When will this process end?
Is this the new paradigm? Will you show the same favoritism to all other applicants by refusing to deny their projects and continuing the hearings indefinitely unless the applicants decide to withdraw their applications? Or, will you reserve this special favor for the select few projects that you personally like?
Adding these latest improprieties to the long list of previous missteps (including your acceptance of a recommendation from your appointed Planning Commissioners when you knew they never vetted the Traffic Study) leads me to the conclusion that the citizens of Strawberry cannot get a fair hearing before your Board. I make that statement in all seriousness, and not lightly.
You are not basing your decisions on laws and facts. Rather, you are basing your decisions on your own personal preferences, while ignoring the laws and facts.
The office complex is in Supervisor Sears’s District, but the Supervisors from the other 4 Districts are pushing to approve this application. You have treated Supervisor Sears with disdain and disrespect.
Let her make the motion for the project in her District. Stop jumping in front of her. If you disagree with her motion, then let your votes be recorded in the record. Then you are free to make your own motion. You would expect the same consideration for a project in your Districts.
You have shown an obsession with development in tiny Strawberry, which borders on irrational vindictiveness.
For this reason, I strongly condemn and repudiate Supervisor Arnold’s remarks that Strawberry never says “Yes,” and always says “No” because they are untrue, unhelpful, and divisive. They were a parting cheap shot after public comments had ended (and we could not reply).
I was disappointed that none of you (including our own Supervisor Sears) challenged Supervisor Arnold’s remarks, because your silence implies that you agree with her.
We say “Yes” to fair hearings, with full disclosure.