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Mill Valley Patch
Help Protect Marin’s Community and Area Plans
The following is an Open Letter to all Marin County residents living in unincorporated areas.
Dear Fellow Residents of Unincorporated Areas,
I am seeking your support to protect all 24 Community and Area Plans, countywide, at the upcoming Marin County Board of Supervisors Meeting, tentatively set for October 29, 2024.
On April 21, 2023, I filed a lawsuit against Marin County (Corcoran v Marin County) to preserve the authority and integrity of all 24 Community and Area Plans and to retain as much local control of future development as possible, consistent with State laws.
I filed my lawsuit because I believed that the Board of Supervisors had adopted unlawful language that subordinated Community and Area Plan policies in the rush to meet the deadline to submit our County’s Housing Element on January 31, 2023.
On March 25, 2024, Marin Superior Court ruled in my favor and ordered Marin County to remove the unlawful language, known as "precedence clauses," from the Countywide Plan and Housing Element, thereby restoring Community and Area Plans as co-equal parts of the Countywide Plan.
CLICK HERE to read the Final Ruling.
However, instead of following the Court's order and removing the unlawful language as required, County Planning Staff has proposed the addition of unnecessary new language that could once again override Community and Area Plan policies and development standards.
In a favorable development, on September 23, 2024, the Marin County Planning Commission rejected the proposed new language. The Commissioners' recommendation to the Board of Supervisors is to remove the unlawful precedence clauses and to delete all of the proposed new language.
CLICK HERE to watch the Planning Commission Meeting
This issue will now go before the Marin County Board of Supervisors on October 29, 2024. However, there is no telling what the Supervisors will do. The Planning Commissioners are the land-use experts appointed by the Supervisors. As such, the Supervisors typically adopt the recommendations of the Planning Commissioners, but the Supervisors have overruled them in the past.
Given this uncertainty about what the Supervisors will do and the extreme impacts of the proposed new language that the County Staff wants the Supervisors to approve, please help urge the Supervisors to follow the Court’s order and protect the authority of all Community and local Area Plans.
Protecting Community and Area Plans is prudent because these Plans are the result of lengthy, comprehensive, democratic, fully transparent, and thoughtful input by all the stakeholders in the County.
This fact is incontestable and has been confirmed by the Court’s ruling. The County's use of precedence clauses is unlawful.
Gathering support and raising public awareness about issues affecting all unincorporated areas in Marin County has been challenging, historically. We are all geographically separated across the County and our representation on the Board of Supervisors is diluted among several Supervisors.
Because of these circumstances, we need every Supervisor’s vote.
We need to come together and stop this attempt to usurp the authority of our Community and Area Plans.
Please join me and let your voices be heard at the Supervisors' decision-making hearing on October 29th.
What we all need to do now!
- Please call, write, and email your Supervisor and urge them to adopt the Planning Commission's recommendation and restore the rightful authority of Community and Area Plans.
- Send letters to bos@marincounty.gov with the subject line “BOS Meeting re Countywide Plan Revisions.”
- CLICK HERE to please sign the Change.org Petition: Urgent! Save Community Plans
If the Supervisors adopt the Planning Commission's recommendation, then we can put this unfortunate chapter of unlawful County conduct behind us.
With sincere thanks, Bruce Corcoran