The Board of Supervisors, supported by County Counsel Brian Washington, has decided to appeal two separate judicial rulings on controversial land-use projects in Marin County.
The rulings in essence required more independent assessment and more opportunity for public input on these projects — one a longtime hiking and horse trail that the county wishes to open to bikes as well; the other the extraordinarily controversial San Geronimo Golf Course acquisition.
Citizen groups successfully won their lawsuits to open these projects to greater analysis and public participation, but for inexplicable reasons the supervisors have opted to challenge the citizen groups, each operating off donations from local residents. And the county counsel and supervisors will simply pull from taxpayer funds to pursue this litigation, rather than use that money far more productively to generate quality information that would greatly inform public debate on these public lands projects.
By pursuing the latter course, they would also aid healthy civic participation and cultivate respect and trust for our county government.
Contact your supervisors and urge them to reverse these ill-advised decisions, and to instead deploy these funds to better understand all the impacts of these projects — as a judge clearly saw was needed — and to let the public fully weigh in.