Strawberry Community Meeting – 1/12/14

Over 100 people joined us at the Strawberry Rec Center Sunday night for an update on the Priority Development Area activity, and to hear Bob Silvestri discuss the flaws inherent in Plan Bay Area.

For more from Bob, go here.

At the meeting, we asked members of the community to do 5 things:

1) Sign up to this blog, to get the latest developments

2) Please come to the board meeting of the Transportation Authority of Marin (TAM) at 7pm on January 23, in the Board of Supervisors chambers on the 3rd floor of the Civic Center, and tell them that we don’t want to be in a PDA.  The topic doesn’t belong at the TAM meeting, which the TAM board acknowledged at their last meeting, but the Board of Supervisors (who should be considering the issue) has told us that it does, so that PDA money can be reallocated.  So we’re going there to say, “we don’t care how much money you allocate, we don’t want to be in the PDA!”  The price of being the focal point of development in Marin for the next 25 years isn’t worth the extra $350,000 they may allocate to us.  In fact, the more money they focus on us, the worse it may be!

3) Take one of the one-page “Please remove us from the PDA” petitions we printed out and get 5 of your neighbors to sign it.  We’re not asking people to pound the pavement (though if you want to, that would be great too), we’re just asking everyone to get 5 new signatures. Our target is to get over 1000 signatures, even 1500, and we’re currently at over 750,  We want the Supervisors to know that as many people as possible are opposed to this new PDA designation and the unknown consequences it may have.

4) Donate what you can on the right-hand side of our website.  You can read more about us here.  What do we do with your donation?  We try to marshall and communicate with the community (you may have seen our ad in the Marin Independent Journal, you’re reading a website that we built, and it costs every time we have a community meeting).  We can contribute to the lawsuits against Plan Bay Area (where PDAs come from), and the recently passed Housing Element.  We can hire consultants to help us more effectively affect the county.  We can contribute to candidates running for District 3 positions (in Sausalito, Tiburon or Mill Valley) or Supervisor positions (like Arnold’s and Adams’ seats this year) who aggressively take positions against development.  We have a lot to accomplish, and everything that’s not volunteered costs us money, as does influence in the county.

5) Donate your time.  There are many things we need to do – gather signatures, help update our website, research the MV School District capacity and plans, research the Marin Municipal Water District capacity and plans, show up at the Board of Supervisors meeting or other meetings through the county.  We have volunteers doing a variety of things.   If you can think of something you can contribute, or if you have time but don’t know what to do, contact us.

We also shared important communications from our group, including Sunday’s IJ ad; an Op-Ed piece from volunteer Chuck Ballinger, former member of the Strawberry Design Review Board; a letter to the TAM board drafted by volunteer Ray McDevitt; and Bruce Corcoran’s latest missive to the Board of Supervisors asking for consideration.  These will be posted on the website here.

We’l update more specifically about the PDA, the TAM meeting, and what you can say in upcoming posts.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for joining with us.