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SFD Rehabilitation Project Revelations Obtained by PRA
Fundamental shortcomings in the SFD "Rehabilitation" project's outreach, design, and intentions were revealed by an email from project head Dan Dawson to Katie Rice, Supervisor for Marin County District II and the project's chief sponsor. The March 17 email reveals the inner workings of a process that's not inclusive and has transparency issues. These shortcomings are reflected in project priorities and design that are contrary to what constituents want.
First Problem: An Exclusive Process
A fundamental problem with the Sir Francis Drake Rehabilitation project’s design is that it was conceived through a political lens -- one that favored a small number of constituents at the expense of the vast majority of Central Marin. The project proposes to repave and reconfigure the SFD corridor from the Ross line to highway 101. Residents outside of the immediate vicinity were not notified about or included in a project that will have enormous impact on drivers throughout central Marin.
The gist of the March 17 email from Dawson to Rice was that the only community input needed for the SFD project was that of the Greenbrae Property Owners Association and Kentfield Planning and Advisory Board (KPAB). Accordingly, those were the only resident representatives initially invited by Supervisor Rice onto the Community Advisory Committee; the other members were representatives from Marin General Hospital, Marin Catholic School, Bon Air Shopping Center, and the Marin County Bicycle Coalition. No one was invited to represent other Central Marin communities whose tens of thousands of residents would be affected daily by the SFD rehab project’s impact on traffic congestion. In fact, those residents were in the dark.
The CAC was confined to those proximate neighbors with a shared parochial interest.
When the Kent Woodlands Property Owners Association asked to have a board member included in the process, Dawson sent an email to Rice on March 17 expressing concerns that including the KWPOA rep would result in “infecting what has been a good group dynamic to date.” He suggested a rationale for refusing to include a Kent Woodlands Director. Part of the rationale was that the KWPOA representative’s concerns might result in “whatever support we may have gotten from KPAB evaporating.”
In other words, the county’s desire was to assemble a community advisory committee that would provide unanimous endorsement for the project. And it could also “check off the box” of community participation.
In Dawson’s communique to Rice, it’s evident that politics are driving the public outreach process, which he refers to as a “political minefield.”
From Dawson’s memo it also seems that the political agenda informed what came next: the final pre-EIR (Environmental Impact Report) public forum on the process.
Besides the carefully constructed CAC, the other public participation on the project consisted of presentations at one KPAB meeting and three “workshops.” With the exception of the third workshop, these were poorly publicized and attended. Thanks, however, to concerned citizens’ use of NextDoor, the third workshop (March 15) had a bigger showing, with many Kentfield and Ross residents showing up (though word still hadn’t reached other parts of the affected Ross Valley). Attendees at that session listened to a detailed presentation by the county staff and consultants, supported by remarks from Supervisor Rice. This was followed by an assembly style Q&A at which attendees probed the details and expressed views and suggestions. It became clear that the majority of attendees had serious reservations about the project or objected to it in entirety.
This contradicted the county’s narrative of a successful community outreach that had garnered overwhelming support.
The county decided to hold one more public forum prior to submitting the project proposal (which has changed very little in recent months) to Environmental Impact Review. It appears that after the contentious March 15 county workshop, the county wanted to host another forum that would defuse objections and project the appearance of a pro-project community consensus.
Sent just two day's after the contentious March 15 workshop, Dawson’s missive to Rice opines “there is sufficient community consensus that we don’t need to do another meeting in the same format as this last workshop, debating the merits of particular treatments, but instead focus on refinement and funding prioritization of the various project components.”
The above line of thinking informed the format of the final pre-EIR “outreach” for the SFD rehab project. The county chose to host a four hour open house, held at the odd time of 4-8PM on a Wednesday (June 1). This “show and tell” format had all the hallmarks of divide and conquer, check-off-the-box, community outreach which has become all too common in Marin.
Significantly, by avoiding an assembly format, the county’s June 1 meeting did not provide a good way for people to collectively register objections, which the vast majority of attendees wanted to do. The main opportunity for formal feedback was a “comment form” which most people did not fill out. The comment form provided little spaces to write in “thoughts” about various design elements such as traffic signals, pedestrian access, bike network, landscape enhancements, transit, and something cryptically called “delay reduction methods.” People who came to lobby for traffic congestion relief, a do-over of the project priorities, or to object to the entire enterprise as a waste of money found no good outlet. Most attendees departed frustrated.
Second Problem: Lack of Transparency and Possible Document Destruction
Besides providing a lens into the intersection of public works planning and the politics of incumbency in an election year, the March 17 email from Dawson to Rice uncovered another issue: lack of transparency and possible document destruction.
The PRA queried communications between Supervisor Rice’s office and that of the Department of Public Works. The purpose of the query was to gain insight into what lay behind the county’s design of and insistence on an increasingly unpopular SFD Rehab project.
The response was a two inch thick stack of photocopies (1) to and from Dawson’s department, and (2) to and from Rice’s lead Aide, Nancy Vernon. Notably missing from the response were emails printed out directly from Katie Rice’s inbox or sent folder. The March 17 email from Dawson to Rice was provided by Dawson’s office. Obviously there should have been a corresponding email from Dawson in Rice’s inbox. But none was provided in reply to the PRA. In fact, in response to the PRA, Katie Rice’s office provided no emails at all from the Supervisor’s inbox or sent folders. (Many emails were provided from the inbox and sent folder of Nancy Vernon, but none for Rice herself even though she was contacted or copied on other emails provided to us via PRA.)
I have been trying to get to the bottom of this for several weeks. My original assumption was that Rice’s email files were not provided because someone neglected to do so. My inquiry to county counsel’s office on this topic resulted in this May 13 reply from Ed Kiernan:
“I’ve forwarded your information along and hope to have a response to you next week. It possible that the responsive documents were not found because they had already been deleted. However, we will double check.”
Failing to receive a response within the indicated timeframe, I inquired again and received this reply from Kiernan on May 23:
“I’m working with Supervisor Rice’s assistant. I hope to have more information for you on Wednesday.” [May 25]
On May 25, Kiernan emailed me:
"I’ve asked Supervisor Rice’s assistant to go back through their emails again for documents responsive to your request and will send out copies of what she found tomorrow. I don’t know which you have already, so I’ll just send them all. Please note that it is possible you may have emails that include Supervisor Rice or her assistant that the County no longer has as a consequence of the email having been deleted."
The second mention of document deletion prompted me to ask Kiernan whether county procedure permits deleting emails. That resulted in this reply:
"Regarding the deletion of emails, the vast majority are of a transitory nature and are therefore not required to be retained. I am not privy to what Supervisor Rice’s deletion habits are, so I do not know whether she has deleted an email that you may have obtained from another source. I merely pointed out that possibility as a potential explanation for why she may not now have it to provide to you. Finally, I would note that while certain documents are not subject to disclosure pursuant to a PRA (e.g. those that are attorney client privileged, contain proprietary information, constitute personnel records, etc.), in this case, none has been withheld."
A couple of the emails Dawson’s office provided pursuant to the PRA also included copies of emails related to the SFD project that were sent to constituents from Rice’s personal and campaign email accounts. This caused me to ask whether those accounts had also been looked at for material that might have been appropriately provided in response to the PRA. Here’s Kiernan’s May 27 response:
"Unless the California Supreme Court rules otherwise on the matter, I believe the rationale contained in City of San Jose v. Superior Court of Santa Clara (petition granted) is correct that private email accounts are not subject to the Public Records Act. Nevertheless, I checked with Supervisor Rice and she agreed to provide any responsive documents from her private email accounts, which she expects to be quite limited. In this regard, you may have documents sent from her private accounts to others (such a Dan Dawson) which are not available to produce as she has her settings programed to delete emails in her private accounts after 30 days. I will forward whatever is found to you next week." [week of May 30]
As of June 5, I have yet to receive any documents subject to the PRA directly from any of Katie Rice’s email accounts. Nor have I received any answer to the question as to whether they were all deleted.
Election Day, June 7, will likely come and go without any clear answer about what ever happened to Katie Rice’s SFD emails.
Bernie Sanders famously told Hillary Clinton that people are "sick of hearing about your damn emails.” In Rice's case I don’t agree. Our current Board of Supervisors has been reprimanded by a Grand Jury for lack of transparency and by a Court for a violation of the Brown Act (California’s sunshine law) that occurred at Rice’s initiative.
Unresponsiveness to a PRA and/or deleting emails may be standard practice for our supervisors and small potatoes. But, it's relevant within the context of other transparency violations.
An exclusive process and a lack of transparency are fundamental flaws in the Sir Francis Drake Rehabilitation project and indeed in Supervisor Rice’s approach to governance. Let’s hope that the contested election serves as a wake-up call.
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