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Marin County
The consciousness we bring to civic and government life
On Tuesday, April 25, I attended the BOS meeting and spoke during Public Open Time and after the Transportation Authority of Marin presentation.
I started by saying how pleased I was to have been invited to facilitate a discussion about consciousness for the Institute of Noetic Sciences. I've been thinking about it a lot, including in terms of consciousness we bring to civic and government life. In that context, I had 3 issues to bring up:
1. Kate Sears' secrecy around convening a Study Group to consider the Seminary Project in Strawberry. Without public disclosure on a topic the community has repeatedly shown they deeply care about, she hand-picked a group of about 14 and convened 8 meetings where participants were urged to keep quiet about all those proceedings. She even hired a facilitator, brought in the property owners and her hand-picked architect, (again without public notice) to meet with the group.
Where is her consciousness about public openness and transparency?
2. Plan Bay Area 2040 has been released. I asked Damon Connolly, whose name is on the document, if he knew about the plans conclusion that the Plan will "hollow out" the middle class. The rich will get richer, we will have far more people living in poverty and the middle class will disappear because of having to bear the burden of paying for services to support the rich.
How in good conscience can Damon, as an elected official, and the rest of us support such a plan?
3. The Board of Supervisors has been asked to spend $152,000 per year to approve the feel-good, more expensive “Deep Green” payment fee to Marin Clean Energy, an unelected organization where the Executive Officer was paid $287,000 in salary and benefits, in 2014 (source: TransparentCA). I referred the Supervisors to Paul Premo’s excellent letter to the editor in Tuesday's IJ that argues there is little credibility to the claim that taxpayers will get cleaner energy by paying the Deep Green fee.
I recommended the BOS use that money to support low-paid, essential services provided by the In-Home Health Care staff, who currently earn less than $14/hour.
How in good conscience should we pay for a feel-good "fluffy" label when essential services go unmet?
Transportation Authority of Marin Comment:
Let's keep in mind that all five members of the BOS are also members of the Transportation Authority of Marin Board. We might assume, as members of the governing body that meets once a month, they already know what's going on, which raises the question of the purpose of being on the BOS agenda.
Stephanie Moulton Peters, TAM Board chair and member of the Mill Valley City Council, made opening comments about this TAM presentation and then formally turned it over to ED Dianne Steinhauser, TAM’s Executive Director. Dianne went through 40 PowerPoint slides packed with facts and figures. At the end Judy Arnold said, "Thank you very much. Our next item is . . . Oh, ahh, yes, is there anyone here who wants to speak to this issue?"
I was the only speaker. I identified myself as part of CO$T - the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers - and thanked them for the presentation. I told them that the public doesn't have an appetite for more taxes.
TAM faces trust and credibility problem that stems from 3 sources:
1) A 2011 decision to give SMART $8 million;
2) A 2016 survey with numerous voting irregularities, which lobbyists to promote the survey heavily to its supporters and allowed multiple votes by special interest groups taking the survey (as Richard Hall and Al Dugan wrote about in a Marin Voice column, April 16; and
3) The recent fiasco about trying to get cities to sign off in support of raising the sales tax cap by using unclear, misleading language.
I concluded by urging them to take the time to do proper due diligence, in order to have a new, more fair and transparent survey in May/June and to make appointments to the Expenditure Advisory Committee that are less biased in favor of a tax increase and more accurately reflect the percentage of users who benefit from TAM funds and those who do not.
When I was done there was not a single question or comment from the Board.