If you only attend ONE community meeting this year, THIS should be it.

Monday, December 7th, 7:30pm, at the Strawberry Rec Center Gym

The Strawberry Design Review Board (responsible for reviewing development proposals) will be reviewing the initial proposal from the North Coast Land Holdings group to build 300 units and a (up to) 1000 student Branson Campus at the current Seminary property.

This proposal has the potential to dramatically change the nature of the community we live in.  Whether you oppose it or favor it, this is the meeting to make your thoughts known.

The county Planning Department, Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors rely on the Strawberry Design Review Board to make recommendations about the Strawberry community, and the SDRB relies on YOU, members of the community, to make your voices heard.

The actual proposal (which is hundreds of pages) can be found on the County website by clicking here.

A former Design Review member wrote this Marin Voice article for the Independent Journal about the need for the community to get involved, and here a former Branson board member laments Branson’s lack of engagement with the community in another Marin Voice article.

Seminary Neighborhood Association, a local community group, has created a FAQ about the proposal which you can see by clicking here SNA FAQ November 15 2015.

In addition, you can find letters written to the SDRB by the Seminary Neighborhood Association’s attorney and a local resident about the proposal, discussing some concerns, here Ltr – Marin CDA – completeness – 11.20.15 and here McDevitt SDRB Letter 11-30-15.

If you have an opinion, come, bring a neighbor who may not be aware of this meeting, and express it.  If you don’t have an opinion yet, come and learn about proposals that may have a huge effect on the place you live.

Either way, it’s important that our residents come out and participate in the most important decisions about our neighborhood for the next hundred years.

Monday, December 7th, 7:30pm, at the Strawberry Rec Center Gym

Strawberry Rec Center, 1st floor meeting room

You’re invited to join Strawberry residents at a meeting hosted by the Strawberry Community Association to review current activities that may affect traffic congestion in Strawberry and Southern Marin.

Did you know that….
– the Belvedere Place office behind In ’n’ Out Burger is being considered for a Marin General Hospital Clinic of almost 50,000 square feet, on top of the current growth in medical services in Strawberry?
– Mill Valley has a “traffic task force” that recently floated a busing pilot program idea focused on Strawberry Point Elementary, since more than half of Strawberry Point students come from the other side of 101?
– metering lights on 101 are being planned for next summer, along with modifications to the 101/Seminary Interchange?
– CalTrans has been considering an additional traffic light at Knoll Drive and Tiburon Blvd?

All this is in addition to the stated plans for the Seminary property, which includes a high school larger than Marin Catholic and an additional 10% growth of Strawberry housing.

Strawberry Community Association is dedicated to making sure that Strawberry residents are informed and represented in the decisions that affect their community. Traffic is one of the most important concerns in the county today, and one that county government is always considering changing. None of these events may happen – or all of them may, and we could find Strawberry as the Southern Marin version of “S. Eliseo Drive” of medical facilities, along with the largest private high school in Marin, expanded intersections and traffic lights, and an E Strawberry Dr. pullout for school buses. You may approve or disapprove – but you should be informed and make your voice heard!

Join us, and learn and discuss the latest about these and other current events affecting Strawberry. All are welcome regardless of point of view.

Strawberry Community Association is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization.

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.