On Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008, it is absolutely necessary to get to the polls and VOTE NO AGAINST PROP 98. Marinmaven and the entire family from the most FoxNews Fan Conservative to the most Flaming liberal (me) are voting NO on Proposition 98. It’s Howard Jarvis and Company with one of the most dishonest and badly written initiatives evah.

They use legitimate concern over a somewhat troublesome US Supreme Court decision that governments can use eminent domain to take property for private development to ram through a wide reaching and destructive initiative. Instead of writing a straightforward law like Proposition 99, that focuses its goal directly to the Supreme Court decision, 98 broadens what they consider is a government taking to the detriment of Californians.

Proposition 98 outlaws any law or regulation that might limit property value for individuals and companies to benefit the environment or community good. Proposition 98 considers rent control a government taking and rent control ordinances would be abolished. This is during a time of an unprecedented mortgage crisis in our state where people are losing their homes and forced to look for rental housing. Abolishing rent control will turn out the elderly on fixed incomes, low income families, single moms, people who are trying rehabilitate themselves. More and more Californians are becoming renters, and this initiative will take away all their protections as they can be interpreted as limiting the value of property.

If you doubt there are landlords who would gouge renters you need only look at Contempo Marin where the landlord wants to triple people’s regardless of what it does to the value of their private property — their trailer home.

Proposition 98 will take away the right of communities to protect themselves from growth that would effect their health and their own property values. Imagine if you couldn’t keep a landowner from polluting if its prevention in any way limited his property value? What if a community had a landowner of a blighted strip mall that was attracting crime? With Proposition 98, communities would no longer have a say in the development of their community.

Proposition 98 is so badly written, it will even effect California’s ability to work on needed public works to keep our water clean and fix the infrastructure we all use.

So, regardless of what you may think of the merits of rent control, you have to be concerned what Prop 98 will do to California’s ability to have enough storage and delivery systems for clean drinking water, have enough schools, prisons, flood control, service roads, and other infrastructure that we are going to need for our growing state. All of these projects benefit business as well as individual citizens.

Howard Jarvis’s organization is betting on low turn out to ram this down our throats. We got to stop them! In the next post, I am going to tell you how how I am going to pitch in and how you can join me to defang, Derail, and Defeat Prop 98. It is just too extreme.

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In the audience were members of religious congregations and non-profits across Marin County. Their goal is to unite to create political will toward solving Marin County’s problems. Problems include landfill and waste issues, emergency shelters, mental health services, affordable housing, senior services, education funding, and humane treatment of our immigrant population.

The next Marin Organizing Committee meeting will be Thursday, June 5, 2008 at Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, 1520 Grand Avenue @ Acacia in San Rafael. The meeting will be from 7:00 to 8:30 pm and will cover the California and County Budget and building leadership in your institution.

This whole effort started six years ago this May when five Marin clergy met to discuss forming a new organization that could address issues of concern in Marin. Member institutions include: Fairfax Community Church (UCC), Congregation Rodef Shalom of San Rafael, St. Anselm Catholic Church of San Anselmo, St. Vincent de Paul Society, Parent Services Project, Mill Valley Seniors for Peace, Congregation Kol Shofar of Tiburon, First Congregational Church (UCC) of San Rafael, Mill Valley Community Church (UCC), Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, and Church of St. Raphael/Mission San Rafael. The goal is to incorporate into a 501(c3) later in 2008. 21 other organizations are looking seriously in joining Marin Organizing Committee. There were delegates from many if not all of these organizations.

Marin Organizing Committee believes that democratic action begins locally at home. In a county with so much affluence and beauty it is easy to overlook that the social and economic problems that afflict it. They hope to shape Marin county’s public policy for common good and social justice. They seek to educate its members on the issues, form consensus, create public will, and work with public officials to create change.

In attendance were our local politicians: Carole Migden, Mark Leno, Joe Nation, Jared Huffman, Supervisors Hal Brown and Steve Kinsey. They were each asked in front of the audience they could commit to working on these issues and attend house meetings. Each official or candidate pledged that they would and was allowed to speak to the issues that were brought up at the meeting.

The action assembly included poignant stories from our fellow residents. One man learns English by day and works as a bus boy in Terra Linda at night. He gets off work after all the public transportation is available, so he has to walk 5 miles to his home on the Canal. There is a woman, who’s family lives in fear of being torn apart by ICE raids. There are residents of Contempo Marin who own their trailer home, but rent the land beneath them. Sam Zell, the owner of the land is poised to triple these people’s rent even though he is listed as 52nd on Forbes 400 Richest Americans. Many of these residents are elderly with fixed incomes and families struggling in a County that has a problem with developing affordable housing.

Rents are currently $665 to $800 per month with fees for water, garbage, utilities, and common area improvements. Some homes are paid for, but some residents also have mortgage payments. Zell wants to raise the base rent to $1,925 or $23,000 a year. Residents here are postal workers, firefighters, retired police officers, school teachers, retirees, and others who rely on affordable housing and where this increase will be a hardship.

Too add to the misery, the increase will negatively effect the trailer home they own by making them impossible to sell in an already difficult housing market. No one is going to buy a trailer home if rents and fees are as high as Zell would want them.

Contempo Marin residents are also concerned with Proposition 98 on June’s ballot which under the guise of eminent domain protection would abolish rent control in 100 cities and protection for renters. It is no surprise that Proposition 98 is supported by wealthy landowners including mobile home park owners. This is why Marinmaven is passionately opposed to Proposition 98. We will be covering the Contempo Marin situation in more detail in future posts.

Marin has notoriously high rents and low service wages that can put low income Marinites one paycheck away from being homeless. The Marin Continuum of Housing conservatively places the number of homeless in the county at 1200. Homeward Bound, a successful non-profit runs emergency, transitional, and permanent housing programs for approximately 350 people per night. The county receives 2.2 million per year from HUD to develop an open shelter, where any person can access a free place to sleep as long as there is room and there is respectful behavior. Despite this funding, there is no such facility in Marin and people must go outside the county for such shelter. Shelters can keep the homeless off the streets and allow them to interact with services that will prevent them from being chronically homeless.

Often homelessness and mental health intersect. If individuals with mental illness can get comprehensive treatment that can make a difference whether they are functional and can support themselves, or living with mental illness and unable to keep a job or a roof over their head. Currently, you have to have severe mental illness or be in acute crisis to obtain county mental health services if you are uninsured or under insured.

In 2006, the Marin Alliance for Psychiatric Services or MAPS formed to provide access to comprehensive, culturally competant, community-based outpatient psychiatric and mental health services to Marin adults who lack such services on their own. This highly successful program which served 200 adults in 2 years is losing the California Endowment two-year implementation grant (April 2008). MAPS and their supporters have raised $25,000 of the $75,000 needed to keep it running. Currently, Marin County spends 2%-3% of its budget on mental health services. The county Supervisors need to look to supporting MAPS fully.

Another topic that was brought up was the Redwood Landfill. One of the issues that are near and dear to my heart is moving this county to zero waste. Did youknow that the average Marinite throws away 10 pounds of trash per day? That trash ends up at the Redwood Landfill. It pollutes the air, leaks toxic liquids, and produces dangerous methane gas. It does this right by our tidal marshes and flood plain right in between two earthquake faults. Waste Management Corporation is the largest for-profit trash company in the country runs this landfill and wants to expand and renew the operation — doubling capacity to 8 billion more pounds of garbage 166 feet high.

The county supervisors need to be more vigorous in oversight and put in place measures that will reduce landfill use and convert the methane gas into energy generation. County residents (and businesses) and residents (and businesses)  from other counties that may use the landfill, should be given incentives to compost organic materials. Attention should be paid to seismic safety and creating a sturdy levee system in preparation of sea rise due to climate change. An aggressive plan must be put in place today to divert waste from landfills.  Waste Management Corporation should be responsible in funding zero waste initiatives and a toxic clean up fund.

I walked away on Thursday night blown away by the attendance and the enthusiasm. I really want to see more organizations and individuals to join this movement. If Marin Organizing Committee can convert education, organization, and mobilization into action that puts pressure on our politicians to change policy this would be revolutionary. This could be a potent example of change from the ground up.

If you would like more information and want to get involved, contact Meredith Parnell at (415)479-3441 x 3016.

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