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meehyun kurtzman
Supreme Court Denies to Hear MCA's Appeal
Nearly four years ago MCA took on a challenge to preserve our Marin's character and legacy of environmental stewardship by saying NO to the county on their planning policy, the 2013 Housing Element (HE), which was illegal, flawed and overreaching. We had a narrow victory in the Marin County Superior Court, but ultimately we did not prevail in our subsequent attempts to nullify key elements of its policy.
As of now, we regret to inform you that the MCA petition to the Supreme Court to challenge the Appeals Court decision has been denied, and the Supreme Court will not be hearing the MCA Case. The disappointing Appeals Court decision will therefore not be overturned, leaving the future of Marin County unclear and subjected to case-by-case legal challenge for each new development that may be filed in future.
When the Appeals Court rendered its disappointing decision in April, it opted to make this an Unpublished Court decision. This means in essence that the Appeals Court did not want its opinion to stand as precedent for other cases. Likewise, when the Supreme Court made its determination to deny our request for a Hearing within 36 hours of the filing of our Final Brief, we can only surmise that it did so with the knowledge that this bad Appeals Court decision could not be used as precedent in any other case.
As for Marin County’s planning future, the outcome is uncertain. The legal challenge to the HE SEIR (Supplemental Environmental Report) has revealed improper environmental reviews and land use zoning for over 49 land sites (over 5000 acres) throughout the county. Going forward, every new development application on each of the sites named will require that these planning conflicts be re-studied and potentially litigated on a case-by-case basis.
We believe this will lead to an inevitable series of expensive lawsuits, prohibitively high costs for development of new affordable housing, and inconsistent, poorly placed and unpredictable outcomes for the location of new affordable housing developments throughout the County.
There are no winners with this disappointing Supreme Court denial.
There are, however, a few silver linings:
- The issues raised have delayed--and we hope will discourage—future projects that have been shown to have extremely problematic and improperly evaluated negative impacts to our environment, our communities, our traffic capacity, and our school districts. Unresolved legal issues of improper tiering and inadequate CEQA Environmental Review will be raised for each and every new development application included in this 2013 SEIR.
- Not only is MCA Attorney Michael Graf deeply knowledgeable on these issues on all sites but he is also now the expert on the flaws of Appellate Courts decision and can give advice and legal expertise as to how these individual challenges may be framed for subsequent legal recourse. He is now positioned to act swiftly and effectively on behalf of each local community, if or when new development applications arise on any of the 49 sites. The work of the MCA is not lost but remains as an incredible and lasting value to the citizens of Marin as a platform for a successful challenge to unacceptable and infeasible new developments in Marin.
And on a related note…
The fight against improper CEQA tiering by Marin County carries on. MCA is extremely pleased to find that the resources and energy expended by all MCA supporters are already being put to good use and carried forward in a similar case of improper CEQA tiering by the Marin County Open Space District in their decision on trail usage.
Once again, the County of Marin has failed to meet the threshold of proper environmental (CEQA) review of its countywide planning decisions. MCA Attorney Michael Graf has been retained by Community Venture Partners to take up this challenge for Marin County citizens.
Much of the work done for MCA is now serving a good purpose on this related effort to enforce California state environmental standards here in Marin County when our County officials fail to comply.
For more info on this suit, see Marin Post article here: https://marinpost.org/blog/2017/6/4/cvp-files-petition-for-writ-of-mandate-v-mcosd
With sad regret, the Court has not rendered an order for the recovery of legal fees and costs. This means we have still some unpaid bills.
If you believe that MCA's goal to make the public aware of the Counties faulty planning policies and thwarting developments that could have further clogged our already tapped out roadways and infrastructure were worth it, please donate to cover the remaining $5,500 legal costs.
These costs were incurred as the process moved up to petition the California Supreme Court for a hearing.
MCA, a small group of warriors like the Spartan 300, may have lost this battle but if history is any future indication, we hope the Marin Citizens and neighborhoods will stand up to every ill-conceived high-density development proposal. Then our work will not have been in vain.
http://marincommunityalliance.squarespace.com/donate/
With gratitude for all your advocacy on behalf of Marin’s natural beauty and quality of life,
Please share this message.
Signing off, Meehyun K. Kurtzman and MCA team