• To close the golf course purchase, the County would use $2.5 million from Measure A sales tax, which is one of the few funding sources available for vegetation management in open space and parks. In addition, the County would use $1.4 million from the general fund toward the purchase. This too, would be WAY better spent on reducing the fire-prone fuel load in some of the county’s high risk locales.

• After purchasing the property, the county will then spend an additional undisclosed amount of Measure A funds on "total restoration" to nature per the Parks website.

• In purchasing the golf course the County permanently removes the property from the tax rolls. Were the property sold to a private sector purchaser at the contemplated purchase price, it would generate over $100,000 in annual tax revenues to support vital county-wide services including fire prevention.

• The golf course currently serves as an essential fire break and evacuation refuge in an area of the county whose large amount of minimally maintained park and open space land presents a significant fire danger. The County plans a total restoration of the golf course back to nature, increasing the peril of fire to residents of the San Geronimo Valley and beyond. The County Parks website asserts there will be no ongoing salary or other maintenance expenditure. This would lead to overgrown land becoming a fire hazard.

• If the County decides to commit to vegetation management on the former golf course, this will likely result in the county permanently incurring higher compensation expense – salaries, health benefits and pensions --- for employees to care for the property.

Rather than spending millions to purchase and decommission a golf course, our supervisors should focus their energy and taxpayer dollars on the far more urgent need to reduce the fuel load in existing, overgrown county owned properties.

Hurry is the enemy of good public process. Our supervisors seem determined to close the golf course transaction by yearend, while entangling the county in a restriction limiting the use of the property. The net result: insufficient time to conduct an inclusive, transparent public process, explore alternatives, disclose ongoing budget impact and assess environmental impacts.

Given the threats to countywide fire safety, public process, and fiscal responsibility, the fate of the San Geronimo golf course is an urgent concern for ALL Marin residents, not just those living in the San Geronimo Valley.

CO$T urges you to contact our supervisors immediately and also speak up at upcoming Board of Supervisors meetings including during public comment time on November 7 and particularly on November 14, when Supervisors will vote on whether or not to approve the golf course purchase.

• County Uses our Taxpayer Money but Cedes Control of Land Use. The County project was instigated by the Trust for Public Land (a private foundation), which doesn't plan to provide any permanent funding for the purchase or maintenance. Our Supervisors would commit to spend $3.9 million of our dollars, and then search for an additional $4.9 million in state and federal tax dollars, or conservation grants from private foundations.

• Rushed transaction lacks transparency. The rush to close this transaction prior to year end leaves no time for Marin officials and constituents to carefully vet the transaction and explore alternatives. It allows a funding source to dictate the use of the land. This contracts away the power to consider all the citizens' concerns for the use of this land.

• The time urgency forecloses alternatives. The time urgency is created by TPL and/or the seller - at the expense of a good, orderly process that reduces the county's risk and allows for ample public participation.

• There’s no legitimate need to rush. The uses of the golf course land are limited to the current County plan's commercial/recreational designation. There’s no current threat of objectionable alternative uses from which the county’s rushed transaction would “save” us. Marin County’s restrictive permit and planning process provides further protection. The only hurry is the seller’s desire need to close by year end.