Marin Maven » Susan Adams

Marin District 1 Supervisor Candidates Part 1

The Maven — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 20:05:05 +0000

Kerry Mazzoni with Dave Green and Kel Harris

Representing the Marinwood Association, I attended Marin County’s Public Workshop on Non-Motorized transit projects in the Marinwood/Lucas Valley Corridor. As you know I find this stuff actually interesting — the nuts and bolts of creating plans that will make things easier for a community. I found it was a great opportunity to give input from the perspective of living in the area and speaking with neighbors. While I have plans to write up about the actual content of the workshop, the appearance of both candidates for Marin County District 1 kind of distracted me and a few others who were aware of the race.

Dave Green was introducing Kerry and I got to introduce myself. Not only was I one of Directors of the Marinwood Association, but I blog for a Marin politics and SFGate’s In Marin. She gave me a contribution envelope with her contact information and I gave her my card. There was a mention that I could put money in the envelope, but I responded that I hadn’t made up my mind yet, and that was true. It was an okay first impression.

Susan Adams 1

When Susan Adams came in parts of the room were in flutter mode. Both candidates gave each other wide berth keeping to the opposite sides of the room. Susan kicked off the meeting showing she had a command of non-motorized projects in our part of the county and county wide. Mazzoni could only ask the County representative if they have polled residents about what they wanted, even though this night introduced no new plans and only showed existing conditions. The night was asking for public input. If she had been around our part of the woods, she would have known that safer streets have been a discussed topic for sometime. A year or two ago, residents were given a questionnaire about their priorities for working on area routes. Tonight would have been a great opportunity for Mazzoni to hear what people had to say about various sections of road, but she left early. Susan stayed, participated, talked with people — including The Maven.

I will have more to say about this exciting race in other posts.

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Supervisor Adams’ Seat May Be A Contest

The Maven — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:34:48 +0000

After running uncontested last term, it looks like this time District 1’s Marin County Supervisor, Susan Adams will have company on the ballot this election. The MarinIJ reports that former Marin Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni has taken out papers to run and plans to file before the Friday deadline. One of the main reasons cited for running is Adams vote to approve the Marin Energy Authority as an alternative to PG&E.

Three others have taken out papers to run against Susan Adams: Carol Brandt, who ran against Adams eight years ago; Craig Yates, a disability advocate; and Robert Coleman, a leadership training consultant.

Marin Maven invites all candidates to use this forum to inform people what you plan to do as supervisor. Just email us.

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Marinwood Plaza Revival By Farmers’ Market

The Maven — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:11:37 +0000

If all things go as planned, organizers of the Marinwood Farmers’ Market will be opening for business on Saturday mornng, April 24th, 2010 at the site of the Marinwood Plaza. In the past decade, the Marinwood Plaza has been in steady decline becoming a blighted property. A few years ago, the Bell Market closed leaving the community without a walkable market. Again, if all goes well with permitting, the Marinwood Farmers’ Market will be held on Saturday mornings and offers the possibility to revitalize the grounds of the property.

At the beginning of the year, a partnership of veteran vendors of the Civic Center Farmers’ Market have taken out a lease on the grounds of the Marinwood Plaza. The organizers, Kelly Smith and Ron Gradinger envision this as a grassroots community venture that will give back 5% of the proceeds to the local Dixie School District. It will also feature a six morning a week coffee cart where residents can walk or drive through to get lovingly made cup of coffee. As soon as the word went around about the possibility of a Farmers’ Market, you could feel the excitement in the neighborhood. There is even talk of a community garden.

Some felt that the Civic Center Farmers’ Market is a great “destination” market that has gotten too crowded to comfortably shop. Residents who worried about daily and nightly additional traffic and parking with other development ideas, could handle additional traffic and parking a half a day a week.

When Smith and Gradinger made a presentation at the January 12th Marinwood CSD Meeting, and the organizers of the Marin Farmers’ Market also showed up as well. The Marin Agricultural Institute representative Brigette Moran, along with representative farmers, claimed that there were already too many farmers’ markets in Marin and it threatens to spread farmers’ too thin.

Moran claims that they did look into having a both a large or small farmers’ market at the Marinwood Plaza site and, “After meeting with the property owner, and evaluating the site, our board decided that our markets are too large for the site and we would heavily impact the neighborhood with parking and traffic…A year later, our board considered a smaller market on that same site, but came to the conclusion that the site was too close to the Sunday and Thursday Marin Farmers Markets, and that even a small market would negatively impact those farmers.”

I think as the January 30th Community Clean Up Day at the Marinwood Plaza site illustrates our community has the demographics and spirit to support whatever or whoever decides to make a go of it in that spot. I believe they made a mistake in passing us by, but that was their call. Instead, they had decided to open a market in Marin City, which makes having one in Marinwood now somehow impossible.

My support for the Farmers’ Market in Marinwood only has to do with being a Marinwood resident and fighting to keep Marinwood Plaza a
commercial/retail site that fits our needs. Ultimately, someday, there will be a small retail development there because the community
came together an embraced a grassroots solution to a problem of blight in our neighborhood. An out-of-the-box solution is needed during a time where commercial, retail, and residential development money is not quite ready to take the leap. It will be up to our community and surrounding communities of South Novato, Terra Linda, Mont Marin, and Lucas Valley come out and support the farmers and vendor who will serve our community. This is our opportunity to show everyone that our community can support a thriving retail center that we deserve.

Competition is usually a good and very American Apple Pie-ish thing, isn’t it? If farmers are having difficulty going to all these markets, then adjustments need to be made. In this economy everyone who wants to stay in business is rethinking how they do business. You have to be nimble to changing circumstances.

I am like Tim Gunn on Project Runway, I say, “Make it work, people.”

Then, there is the politics behind this whole thing. Our Supervisor Susan Adams is up for re-election and some blame her for trying to put through affordable housing units in plans for Marinwood Plaza. Then last fall candidates for the Marinwood CSD tangled over claims that another stood in the way of getting a plan with a market.This whole thing is bigger than any one candidate.

There is the property owner, Gerald Hoytt, who some say his prop 13 protected property gave himthe ability to sit on the sidelines and wait for deal he wanted. It is a hard sell to anyone who would consider developing anything given the declining state of the property and the chemical spill from dry cleaners past (which they say they are going to clean up). Somehow, Smith and Gradinger are able to work with him and residents seem willing to see what happens.

Marinwood is a community of people who come here to escape high density in a county that is hard pressed to find places for infill high-density development. There was a point where some Marinwood residents would tolerate some high density residential for the sake
of a market, but then the Novato Whole Foods Market happened. One morning, after being excited about a Whole Foods Market selecting downtown Novato, residents woke up to find the multi-story monstrosity. At the last big meeting about the Marinwood Plaza, people were asking how high this development was going to be. You could literally feel the momentum for the whole project die that night. It really brought up the downside of using the promise of a market and a community space while de-emphasizing the residential component that comes with it. You cannot unbuild a monstrosity once it is built.

Then there was the whole practical matter of parking and traffic that came with the residential component. In order to fit the residential units, Marinwood Avenue would have to be narrowed and then the school buses wouldn’t be able to turn around as they absolutely needed to. There was problems with traffic flow that CalTrains didn’t want to deal with to make adding about 200+ cars to the neighborhood tolerable.

This Farmer’s Market is a modest plan that can get the property in good enough shape and proof of concept for a proper retail down the road. It is temporary, scalable, and gives the community a really needed lift in morale.

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“The Instigator’s” Staycation

marinmaven — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:19:05 +0000

My day job is closed for the holidays, but the current economy demands that I spend my vacation at home instead of traveling to an exotic locale. It’s a glorious staycation for me, except for a few days of my vacation where I will have to settle for Salinas as an exotic locale to visit my birthdad. Good news is that I will have more time with YOU my dearest readers. Here’s hoping that your nog is extra nutmeggy.

I changed my twitter icon for the occasion.

Earlier last week I got to bring in the Holiday with local democrats at the Marinwood Community center, where I spied my supervisor Susan Adams, Frank Egger, Greg Brockbank, and all the usual suspects you see when Marin Democrats gather. The entrance fee was to benefit our favorite charity, the Marin Food Bank. The gathering sought to recognize all the hard work the Marin Democrats did this past year. Since Marin was overwhelmingly for Obama, local democrats instead concentrated their efforts calling out of state and helping down-ticket candidates in the red districts of California. Volunteers with the Obama campaign were so seasoned and committed they were the go-to office when the National Campaign needed last minute calls.

My only complaint is that they put a full-size cardboard cutout of Barak Obama in the corner. No one puts Hopey in the corner!

It was this night that I heard it through the grapevine that I, Marinmaven, am an instigator. According to Merriam-Webster that is a good thing as it means, “to goad or to move forward” or “A person who intentionally starts something” and I do try to move things forward or goad people into being more interested in politics and other interesting things happening around them. From what I gathered by what was said, the person or persons thought I was an instigator in a different sense, “someone who deliberately foments trouble; ie. “she was the instigator of their quarrel”. If that is true then I think that person or persons know little of me. Goodness gracious. If I ever caused trouble it is done quite unintentionally and obliviously, but I sincerely doubt that I have ever caused any problems at all. People may not like my opinions (ie. SMART or Marinwood Plaza, etc), but I challenge anyone to point out where I am unfair. I have always allowed people to voice opposing views.

I am proud instigator in the best sense– I bring up topics, ask questions, and put my thoughts out there for people to react to. So chill out, man. Way to try to harsh my mellow, but guess what — my mellow is not harshed.

Last year, out-of-the-blue, I received a book in the mail to review on Amazon.com. That book was Greg Mortenson’s book, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, where Mortenson states that we can win the hearts and minds of Pakastanis not through military involvement, but by building schools, social services, and personal interactions. Mortenson says this not out of hippie-dippie, ivory-tower idealism, but out of personal experience and results. After reading the book I was angered and frustrated how Americans have missed the boat in promoting good will and peace though one-on-one relationships and though investment of time and money.

I got to talk with Dyanne Hunn, who is spearheading the AWSC or American World Service Corps which seeks to involve 21 million Americans in projects like Americorps or the Peace Corps domestically and internationally for the next 27 years. In talking with Hunn, I was reminded of Mortenson’s book immediately and was happy to find that this initiative is informed in part from Mortenson’s book. Hunn was able to cite the page where Mortenson observes that while he carried a modest sum to build his schools, Saudis were coming in with huge suitcases of money to build Madrassas teaching children to hate us. Yet, the program looks even beyond relations in Central Asia and the Middle East, and seeks to get Americans actively learning about the world around them and coming to the aid in world disasters. Hunn’s program has gotten interest from various politicians including Woolsey and Obama’s people. I would like to see this happen. Check it out.

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Marinwood Village

marinmaven — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:19:37 +0000

The Pacific Sun wrote an article about the Marinwood Village project.

The Marinwood Village plan is still includes a grocery store, ancillary retail, a plaza or community gathering area, and a redesign of Marinwood Avenue with not more than 100 residential units. The project is being delayed by worse than expected contamination from the dry cleaner. It also looks from the contamination report that more testing might be needed once they realize that the testing areas were outside the groundwater flow.

Trammell Crow is still interested in the project. The next steps will be to finalize a detailed development plan though an engineering study, while also studying pedestrian, bicycle, and transit linkages. The county has received some additional funds for the project’s community planning process and in order to meet the requirements of this grant the county will be putting together what is called “Marinwood Village Collaborative.”

The “Marinwood Village Collaborative” will include the existing Marinwood Task Force, Trammell Crow Company, County staff, addition representatives from the Lucas Valley Homeowners Association/County Services District #3, Dixie School District, the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative, the Casa Marinwood residents, and an at-large community respresentative. Their job will be to propose a plan that can be submitted by Trammell Crow as part of their development application and environmental review for the project. Leading this process will be David Early from DC&E (Design, Community, and Environment.

There will be a meeting on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, from 2:00 to 6:00pm to go over the roles of the participants of the collaboration. This will not be open to the public. I have been assured by Susan Adams office that “the residents of the Marinwood will have ample opportunity to make their feelings and ideas known regarding the ultimate design for the Marinwood Village.”

February 2009 is a milestone date for a detailed development plan and engineering study.

It remains to be seen if the public will have any impact on what the ultimate design will be. So far, it just seems to me that every time we the public are brought into the process we are being told what will be done rather being a part of the process. They spend their time in public meetings telling us the public what we have to accept and then claim this is a community inclusive process. Sadly, the majority of residents sit outside looking in. Hopefully, with Trammell Crow and this new collaborative will improve on that lack of interactiveness.

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