The following letter, protesting the Mill Valley School Board's unilateral proposal to build a new Middle School on Friends Field at the Mill Valley Middle School, has been sent to the Board.
Dear Dr. Kaufman et al (please distribute to all Board members):
I’ve lived in Mill Valley for 54 years, was a Little League coach here for 15 years, am President of the Scott Valley HOA (though I am writing as a private citizen), and have owned and managed a real estate investment firm in Mill Valley for 40 years.
One thing I’ve learned in my many years in real estate is that there is a big difference between owning a piece of property and doing whatever you want with it.
I have read the deeds, title reports, and use agreements relating to the properties underlying Friends Field and the Community Center. Starting with the 1956 Master Plan, and including the 1968 Use Agreement between the District and the City, and an Amendment thereto, the two 1979 Joint Use Agreements, the 1982 Joint Use Agreement, the 1989 Mill Valley Community Center Report, the 1993 Agreement For the Purchase of Real Property, and the 2014 General Plan, all had this in common - a through-line that accorded the Mill Valley City Council either complete discretion over use of the fields property, or statements that any major change to the fields requires that the District work with the City Council to develop a plan acceptable to both parties and to the benefit of the community at large.
Nowhere in these documents could I find any statement that the City bargained away its rights.
That said, there are many reasons not to build on the fields – among them, the facts that:
- The Community Center, its parking and Friends Field are the City's designated emergency evacuation safe gathering place, parking area, and logistical operations center in times of cataclysmic events (earthquake, wildfire, flooding, etc.),
- The Board did not consult any community stakeholders before claiming the right to eliminate a vital and beloved City asset,
- The Board has now alienated the very people on whom you depend to vote in your funding,
- The Board disregarded all the other kids in town and their sports leagues when talking about “doing it for the kids”,
- The Board would be diverting funds voted in to improve and upgrade all Mill Valley schools for the benefit of one, and to the detriment of all others, etc.
For many decades, all parties have behaved in a co-operative manner, and the City has assumed that all parties would continue to behave in a co-operative manner, rather than imperiously, as exemplified by way this plan was dumped on the community with bare minimum notice, and by the Board‘s rude treatment of the Mayor of Mill Valley last week.
I could go on, but the point of this letter in to remind you that the documents on which the City relied to build and maintain the Community Center and Friends Field clearly give the City various measures of control over the use of the field that MVSD must consider.
I strongly urge you to pivot, again, and consider the alternatives to the ill-conceived plan to build an entirely new school on the fields site.
I am copying all interested parties whom I know to oppose that plan. After conferring with your advisors, if you persist in pursuing that path, I have no doubt that you will face a solid wall of community and legal opposition.
John Palmer