The Marin Post

Letters

December 7, 2020

• Comments on the Mill Valley DEI Task Force Report

  John Palmer — Mill Valley December 7, 2020 - 7:25 PM

  The following letter has been sent to the Mill Valley City Council, regarding the recent DEI Task Force housing policy recommendations.

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  Dear Mayor McEntee and Members of the Council

  I’m writing in regard to that section of the report from the MV DEI Task Force regarding affordable housing, and more specifically, the section calling for all single family housing in MV to be rezoned for 2 units (p 11 #1 and p 40 #2d). While I agree with the Task Force on the subject of heavily regulating short-term rentals (p 11 #2), I cannot agree with their other housing recommendations.

  As a builder and provider of housing for over 40 years, and having worked here in Mill Valley for most of those years, I have seen lots of housing ideas come and go, and have proposed quite a few myself to the Council, the Marin Board of Supervisors, the SF Board of Supervisors, etc, and I can say that subdividing single family lots is one of the worst I have ever heard. It is poorly thought out, presuming as it does that subdividing our neighborhoods will increase affordability, with no consideration to the burdens it would place on parking, traffic, schools, police and fire services, etc.

  The Task Force also recommends rent control (page 40), an ill-conceived idea that virtually 100% of economists reject as actually exacerbating the very problem it purports to solve. It has never worked, yet idealogues keep suggesting it as low-hanging fruit. I could write (and actually have written) an essay on the various ways it harms rental markets.

  Please reject these ideas out of hand. Thank you.

  John Palmer

  Montgomery Partners

  
  
  

• Mill Valley DEI Task Force - Housing Policy is not the job of a Task Force

  Burton Miller, FAIA — Mill Valley December 7, 2020 - 7:22 PM

  The following letter has been sent to the Mill Valley City Council, regarding the recent DEI Task Force policy recommendations.

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  To Mayor McEntee and Members of the Mill Valley City Council:

  I'm writing in response to another "fire drill" - a proposed policy change of great consequence. I refer to Susan Kirsch's letter addressing "housing policies promoted by the Mill Valley DEI Task Force", specifically:

  Change the residential zoning regulations to allow all single-family houses in Mill Valley to be divided into two homes. Streamline the ability to convert a single-family home into two condominiums, which could then be sold or rented separately.

  The City Council needs to manage the scopes and objectives of its several committees, task forces and working groups. The community can not and should not have to respond to multiple committees that take it upon themselves to formulate housing policy. The Council should not be spending its time reacting to uninformed, life/community/character-changing policy proposals proffered by non-policy-making bodies tasked with other objectives.

  To reference the Andy Berman "bucket" concept - committees and task forces need to know what is in their buckets and what is not. They need to stay on point and not take it upon themselves to propose specific policies in areas for which they have no real knowledge, qualifications or authority. They can appropriately identify goals, but not policy.

  Policy is the City Council's purview.

  It remains inappropriate for the City to present radical rezoning and other policy proposals on the community in the midst of the pandemic and now a stay-at-home order. The community simply cannot respond under the current conditions.

  I urge the Council to take care in framing appropriate committee and task force boundaries. We can't have every committee, working group and task force proposing policy. They should focus on defining goals and objectives.

  Respectively submitted,

  Burton Miller, FAIA

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