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Community Plans

Please Sign the Petition to Save Community Plans

Posted by: Sharon Rushton - January 31, 2023 - 1:58pm

**Please note that the article begins after the Call to Action.

SPREAD THE NEWS...

EMERGENCY ACTION NEEDED - Please follow the below recommended advocacy actions:

1. Click HERE to sign the Online Petition entitled; "Reverse the Needless Destruction of Community Plans in Marin County".

If you need help signing the Change.org petition or leaving a public comment, please do the following:

Click HERE for directions on how to sign the petition.

Click HERE for directions on how to post a comment.

**Please note that you don't need to pay a fee (as Change.org suggests) unless you want to. You should receive an e-mail message from Change.org thanking you for signing as confirmation that your signature has been received.

2. Send emails to the Marin County Supervisors expressing your support of the Petition:

3. Spread the news:

Please ask all your contacts to sign the petition and to send related emails to the Supervisors too. You can use the below link to share the petition on all social media channels:

https://www.change.org/SaveCommunityPlans

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On January 24th, the Marin County Board of Supervisors adopted the 2023-2031 Marin County **Housing Element Update and various Countywide Plan amendments related to the housing plan.

**A "Housing Element" is part of a General Plan adopted by a city, town or county that includes the goals, policies and programs that direct decision-making around housing.

Among other consequences, these amendments needlessly eviscerate community plans by rendering them unenforceable, leaving areas open to development with minimal controls.

Most importantly, there is no requirement by the State that community plans be weakened in order to achieve a compliant Housing Element, according to legal counsel.

Community and environmental organizations, which are located within the jurisdictions of the 26 Marin County Community Plans, are coordinating an effort to maintain the integrity of Community Plans. There is still limited time for the Supervisors to reverse their mistake.

Part of this endeavor involves gathering signatures on the petition entitled; “Reverse the Needless Destruction of Community Plans in Marin County”. The list of signatures is growing rapidly.

Community plans are vital to guide the Marin County Planning Department because each community has different physical aspects, goals, and desires. These plans were meticulously studied and drafted by local residents over many years. They are extremely valued documents that state community goals, objectives, policies and implementation programs relative to the current and foreseeable future conservation and development issues facing each community.

If you care about preserving the environment, habitat, and wildlife; protecting public health & safety; maintaining views; controlling traffic congestion; carefully planning for development; keeping our small-town/ semi-rural/ rural neighborhood character; and safeguarding a host of other treasured aspects of living in Marin, then you will also care about saving Community Plans.

For example, the Strawberry Community Plan is a thoughtful and very detailed guide for the creation and placement of multi-family housing, single-family housing, and affordable housing. It also specifies how open space should be preserved, among other beneficial guidelines. If the Countywide Plan amendments prevail, then this careful, location specific planning would be replaced with the very general, unspecific County zoning.

Another example: The Tamalpais Area Community Plan (TACP) governs Tam Valley, Almonte, Homestead, and Muir Woods Park. Among other directives, the plan spells out specific dimension limitations for most of the commercial/mixed-use sites in Tam Valley and Almonte. Accordingly, the commercial/mixed-use properties on the East Side of Shoreline are limited to 15 feet high, in order to preserve treasured Bothin Marsh's habitat and wildlife as well as maintain scenic views of the marsh and the bay throughout the Community. The TACP is the only place this height limit is found.

This situation repeats itself in the context of all of the community plans. They are the sole planning documents for many critical properties.

As referenced above, land use attorney Riley Hurd determined that there is no requirement by the State of California to downgrade community plans. In a letter addressed to the Board of Supervisors dated January 23, 2023, Attorney Hurd wrote about the amendments or "edit" to the Marin Countywide Plan pertaining to Community Plans:

“…The real question is: why is this edit proposed at all? We already know that state law supersedes local regulations.

It’s also a fact that housing projects may avail themselves of waivers from any local standard that precludes the project from reaching its maximum density.

So, what is the point here other than to try and eliminate Community Plans in a roundabout way?

Please reject these amendments, as the stated goal of allowing housing is already covered by state law.”

The best course of action for the Supervisors to take is to immediately reverse the Countywide Plan text amendments and retain the preferred longstanding language regarding community plans in order to preserve the essential integrity of these vital plans. Due to State time restrictions related to the adoption of the Housing Element, time is of the essence.

If this issue resonates with you, then please scroll down and follow the below “TAKE ACTION” recommendations.

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The Itty-Bitty Details:

Please continue to scroll down to “TAKE ACTION” , if you are not a “detail” person.

More specifically, the Staff Report for the January 24th Marin County Board of Supervisors regarding the Housing Element Update describes the Countywide Plan Amendments pertaining to Community Plans and states the following:

“3. Policies Related to Community Plans:

Some policies in community plans contain standards that are internally inconsistent with the Countywide Plan, inconsistent with state law and/or limit the County's ability to encourage and facilitate multifamily housing and meet the RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation). Staff recommends that some specific language in the CWP that directs approaches to reconciling development review in a manner that could constrain approval of housing be removed and replaced with a clarified policy that would ensure that the Housing Element can be used as intended. The proposed amendments would clarify that the CWP would govern if there are differences with respect to land use designations, density, and development standards. Below is the language proposed to the Planning Commission to address the relationship between the community plans that staff requests your Board to consider:

'No provision of the Countywide Plan, including its community plans, may be applied by the County in a manner that conflicts with State law, or the policies and programs contained in the Housing Element and/or the ordinances implementing those policies. ...When reading, interpreting, and implementing the community plans, none of their provisions can conflict with the Countywide Plan or state housing law.'

This language would be included in the Countywide Plan (CWP) under 'How to Read the Countywide Plan' p. 1.4-3 and in 'Land Use Categories' p. 1.5-3."

In addition, the following language would be added to p. 3.4-3 of the Countywide Plan:

'For residential and mixed use projects where there are land use designation or development density and floor area ratio differences, the Countywide Plan shall prevail.'

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As part of the Housing Element process, the above Countywide Plan (CWP) text amendments were approved and adopted by the Marin County Board of Supervisors. In addition, the CWP text amendments removed the following longstanding language regarding community plans:

"Where there are differences in the level of specificity between a policy in the Community Plan and a policy in the Countywide Plan, the document with the more specific provision shall prevail."

As already stated, the goal is to reverse these Countywide Plan text amendments in order to retain the preferred longstanding language regarding community plans and preserve the essential integrity of these vital plans.

TAKE ACTION! - Please follow the below recommended advocacy actions:

1. Click HERE to sign the online petition entitled; "Reverse the Needless Destruction of Community Plans in Marin County".

If you need help signing the Change.org petition or leaving a public comment, please do the following:

Click HERE for directions on how to sign the petition.

Click HERE for directions on how to post a comment.

**Please note that you don't need to pay a fee (as Change.org suggests) unless you want to. You should receive an e-mail message from Change.org thanking you for signing as confirmation that your signature has been received.

2. Send emails to the Marin County Supervisors expressing your support of the Petition:

3. Spread the news:

Please ask all your contacts to sign the petition and to send related emails to the Supervisors too. You can use the below link to share the petition on all social media channels:

https://www.change.org/SaveCommunityPlans

Thank you in advance for your advocacy. Together we can make a difference!

**Please view the attached petition to see the names of signatures gathered up until January 29th, prior to putting the petition online. (13 Organizations & 185 individuals) The list of signatures is growing rapidly.

PETITION: Reverse the Needless Destruction of Community Plans (pdf 77.6 KB)

Tags

Marin County, Community Plans, Marin County Board of Supervisors, Marin County Housing Element, Marin Countywide Plan Amendments