To the Marin County Board of Supervisors,
First, I’d like to thank the Board for the thoughtful tone of the December 6th meeting. Your questions and deliberations convey the concerns you have for Marin, and your respect for the community.
Though the County has taken great pains to create the new Form Based Code (FBC), a well-intentioned attempt to create objective standards that conform to state law, it is important to point out that the FBC is created in service of a new system of development that undermines most tenets of local control.
The change to “objective language” is not so much of an issue as the projects entering our communities that do not have to conform to normal design review, or even the limitations of the FBC if they qualify
1. Where the local standards no longer apply, and neighbors no longer need be informed of projects going up in their neighborhood, they so are deprived of their long-standing right to weigh in on any proposal. The Design Review Boards (DRBs) have long facilitated these interactions, and neighbors and neighborhoods have benefited from them. The new laws render DRB's and CountyWide Plan land use regulations irrelevant.
2. The FBC represents a loss of meaning to DRBs advisory capacity. That work seeks to engage neighbors — the new regulations do not require engagement or even notices. Height limits, setbacks, and considerate deck and window placement for privacy have kept harmony in the area; large multifamily developments qualifying for density bonuses can be excused from noticing, input, height, parking requirements, FAR limits, and CEQA.
3. There is a need for affordable multi-family housing in the area, but it should be subject to the same diligence expected of any other residential or commercial project.
4. With erosion of CEQA in the case of qualifying projects, the watershed and other natural features, long protected, are exposed to degradation.
5. As the pace of large multi-family development increases, infrastructure upgrades will be required. By law, inclusion of large projects into communities are unfunded mandates; either bonds or parcel taxes would have to be raised to continue to service the County, which already has other attendant and potentially expensive issues with anticipated sea rise.
6. The safety of residents with regards to fire evacuation capacity is jeopardized by any density that further clogs the very few egress routes in many parts of Marin. For example, egress from Tam Valley will be impacted both by development there, and by mandated density development in adjoining areas of Mill Valley.
7. The RHNA is at odds with the laws that mainly “create” housing by offering bonuses to for-profit developers in exchange for inclusion of percentages of affordable housing at different levels. As seen in other parts of the state, these can be large, outside, institutional investors uninterested in the character of an area, willing to buy up neighborhoods of homes to demolish and repurpose into rental housing, eliminating the ability of new families to ever have the benefit of home ownership and the building of generational wealth. The result is a permanent renter class, with all land locked up with massive developments.
I am a member of the Tam Design Review Board, but I am writing this letter as a private citizen. The TDRB has served to maintain livable standards agreed upon within our area for almost 50 years. I fear I am witnessing the end of an era of stewardship.
All of these new housing laws intentionally undermine the very things that Community Plans seek to create; in the case of the Tam Plan: “an involved community with a voice in the harmonious character of the built landscape, a feeling of privacy created by landscaping and neighborly consideration, and careful treading in a fragile environment.”
Without pushback, the state will assume the new status quo is acceptable, and that we have relinquished our interest in preserving the right to participate in the safety, environmental stability, harmony, and quality of the built environment.
Because of these concerns, I respectfully urge the County to join both the lawsuit against SB 9 (which intentionally and detrimentally loosens neighborhood standards without an affordability component), as well as the HCD/RHNA lawsuit, which is based on the failed audit of the RHNA numbers now under further review in the Office of Finance.
Respectfully,
Amy Kalish
citizenmarin.org