Marin IJ April 11, 1999

…but, from where I sit, they’re part of the problem

Dwayne Hunn

_In February the IJ reported that Senator Boxer introduced legislation that would guarantee $2 billion of oil companies’ taxes be siphoned off to maintain public parks, expand urban parks, and protect the country’s wildlife. It would be titled “Permanent Protection for America’s Resources 2000.”

Ann Thomas of Marin Baylands immediately saw the most pressing need for this money, “We would love to acquire the Canalways. It would be an absolute jewel for San Rafael to preserve that site.”

Because the nation’s people face more pressing needs and spending $2 billion differently could better help the environment, why not have a more progressive spending program? Although comfortable Marin does not typify national needs, even here it is easy to spend on more humane and environmental needs.

In the past 20-plus years, Marin has:

· Spent $32.3 million acquiring 13,107 acres of open space ($2,466 per acres)

· Allowed only about 12% of its land to be open to development. Much of what little remains rings the freeway

· Consistently forced developers, thanks to myopic environmentalists, to downzone developments so that affordable units became fewer and harder to deliver

· Grown seven-tenths of 1 percent annually since 1970, with 59% of that growth because of people born in Marin

· Averaged a yearly net migration of 624 since 1970. That bump isn’t causing bumper-to-bumper hugging on Highway 101

· Seen 1997 bring an average annual rent increase of 18.4 per-cent to San Rafael, Marin’s working class town.

· Seen the median 1999 home price rise to a Bunyonville $545,000.

· Gagged its only transit way with soloing commuters.

· Leached more congestion-induced pollutants into canals, farm fields, air and lungs because of its narrow-minded, land-use policies.

Where should conscientious leaders spend the $2 billion in oil revenue?

Ø Transit (so freeways won’t continue sucking quality time out of people’s lives)

Ø Logical land use (quit talking about smart land use and start building smart communities for regular people) along transit corridors

Ø Delivering workplace housing (state statistics show that only half the need has been deliver for too many years).

Marin could have had 1,000 more affordable workplace housing units if myopic environmentalists hadn’t continuously opposed reviving a second transit corridor, which lies along existing train tracks.

Worse than that, these so-called environmentalists have strategically tried to kill the train’s future (or monorails, bus/rail, etc.) by drastically downzoning and forcing designs on communities (Novato Oaks, Hamilton Field, the Marin Civic Center area and now St. Vincent’s/Silveira). This, in turn, could have produced mixed-used communities that provided job, workplace housing and ridership for the environmentally beneficial trains.

How much more environmentally healthy the region could have been had a string of communities been built along the Marin-Sonoma transit corridor, where residents could walk, work, live, shop and ride transit between communities.

Since about 88 per-cent of Marin’s land is open space, agriculture or park land, perhaps it’s time $32.3 million of that $2 billion be paid into a Workplace Housing & Transit District rather than into acquiring St. Vincent’s and the Canalways.

Why not treat people as well as we have treated open space? Let some truly environmental politician, who is concerned about the quality of people’s lives, call for using the expertise in the Open Space District to perform the same miracles for today’s crisis needs -- workplace housing and transit.

Let St. Vincent’s be an affordable town oriented to give ridership to Marin’s unused, existing, track-out-lined, transit corridor. Let Canalways be a mixed-use project that provides workplace housing, perhaps a neighborhood school and a high tech campus for the Lucas company types who consistently leave this aging, too narrow-minded and pricey county.

Keep the $235 million of development costs in Marin that a Lucas-type development would bring, and keep his nearby artists and craftspeople from further gridlocking Highway 101 when they commute into San Francisco.

Let Senator Boxer and Rep George Miller, D-Calif., retitle their legislation “Permanent Protection for America’s Resources and Working People 2000”? Isn’t it a bit more needed, humane and environmental way to spend $2 billion?

Dwayne Hunn, a public educator who lives in Mill Valley, knows that Senator Boxer’s fax number is 415-956-6701 and her email is senator@boxer.senate.gov.

Marin could have had 1,000 more affordable workplace housing units if myopic environmentalists hadn’t continuously opposed reviving a second transit corridor… along existing train tracks.