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District 4 Supervisor Dennis Rodoni will be attending a Townhall with Sheriff Robert Doyle on Thursday August 6th, 2020 at 1:00 PM (see zoom details below). The Townhall will also be streamed to the Marin County Sheriff's Office Facebook page. Viewing will be available after the event also.
As of July 30th, the Sheriff’s office reduced staffing levels at the Point Reyes Substation. Our coastal communities still receive service at all times of the day and night, but response times may be longer in some emergencies depending on where a Deputy is located in relation to the call for service. (Deputies are assigned to work our coastal communities from 11AM to 11PM every day.) This is your chance to ask questions or voice concerns for your coastal community! Supervisor Rodoni and Sheriff Doyle and will be answering pre-submitted questions by Wednesday August 5th at 8pm. Submit your questions, comments or concerns here: https://forms.gle/jXeLqxidqyGyUe1m9. Join zoom meeting at www.zoom.us/Join or call (669) 900-9128 Meeting ID: 849 7473 0764, Attendee ID: #, Password: 447827 The Alliance of Coastal Marin Villages issued their final recommendations. The recommendations were sent to Senator Mike McGuire's Working Group on Community and Tourism. There will be a Town Hall Meeting with Senator McGuire, Supervisor Rodoni, County, State and Federal agency representatives Thursday, Feb.21, 6:30pm, Dance Palace Community Center to discuss the following final recommendations: Traffic Problems 
Parking Recommendations
Garbage
Sharing our Roads
Long-Range Policies
Just a reminder about the Community Life & Tourism Forum
Thursday Feb. 23, 6;00 pm social/refreshments, 6:30 Forum begins Our State Senator Mike McGuire will be handling the moderator duties on the topics of traffic, parking, congestion, waste problems (septic, litter, trash) and how villages are trying to cope with the exponential growth of tourism in recent years. What can county, state and federal agencies do to help us? We'll be asking them to start discussing possible solutions in a working relationship with us. We don't want this to be a blame-game or an anti-tourist meeting (our local businesses depend on visitors) but a sincere start to letting the public agencies that affect our lives hear our voices and our (polite) insistence that they work together, with us and for us. We know Supervisor Rodoni can speak for us to county agencies. We'll also be expecting that Sen. McGuire will be our strong voice to state agencies during the meeting and in follow-up meetings; and that both officials will work together on keeping our voices in front of the agencies and to get timely, respectful responses – and help. Dennis Rodoni, Marin Supervisor, District 4 John Dell'Osso, Point Reyes National Seashore Chief of Interpretation Bijan Sartipi, District 4 Director, Caltrans Robert Mota, Marin Commander Ca. Highway Patrol Robert Doyle, Marin County Sheriff Nancy Cave, North Central District Manager, Ca. Coastal Commission John Dell'Osso, Point Reyes Ntl Seashore Chief of Interpretation JOIN US. WE NEED A STRONG SHOWING OF VILLAGERS. THIS IS A RARE CHANCE TO SPEAK TO HAVE THE AGENCIES AND ELECTED OFFICIALS THAT AFFECT OUR LIVES TOGETHER IN ONE ROOM. WE'RE HOPING IT WILL BE THE START OF A WORKING RELATIONSHIP TOWARD SOLUTIONS. The Summary of Concerns (see next post below) was prepared through two group meetings and follow-ups by the collaborating village associations. Thanks to Randall Fleming for collating the concerns & ideas during the process and adding some context. The Forum is hosted by the PRSVA in collaboration with East Shore Planning Group, Inverness Association, Inverness Park Association, Olema Valley Association, Bolinas Public Utility District, and Stinson Beach Village Association. SUMMARY OF WEST MARIN VILLAGES TOURISM CONCERNS Background for Forum #4 ‘Community Life and Tourism’ featuring State Senator Mike McGuire First Review Draft, November 15, 2016; Working Draft 1, December 4, 2016; Revised December 6, 2016; Revised January 11, 2017; Revised January 15, 2017. West Marin is a special and beautiful area, one that has attracted visitors for many years. Residents recognize that visitors are part of the community life here, are an important part of the local economy, and that tourism makes more goods and services available than the local population alone could support. Balancing tourism and local services however, is an interest shared by residents and businesses. How to balance services and the degree that villages are service centers vs. visitor destinations needs to be addressed. High levels of visitors have generated impacts to the communities and the surrounding environment that are becoming difficult to manage. Community members frequently experience how excessive visitation can easily overwhelm local capacity, disrupt local quality of life, and displace residents. TOURISM DATA The National Park Service estimates that over the past 5-7 years an average of 2.5 million visitors per year have visited the Point Reyes National Seashore. This equals 200,000 visitors per month, peaking on the weekends and holidays. A visitor to resident ratio comparison helps to put this degree of visitation in perspective: San Francisco, with 837,442 residents has about 24.6 million visitors per year, a ratio of 29 visitors/resident. Point Reyes Station and Inverness Park with 1,756 (2010 census by zip code) residents and 2.5 million visitors per year has a ratio of 1,424 visitors/resident. If San Francisco had a visitor ratio equal to Point Reyes, it would have 1,200,000,000 visitors per year and experience impacts to transportation, housing, waste, etc. such as is happening in West Marin. POLICY ISSUES The coastal communities do not accept prioritizing visitor access over and above the impacts of such visitation on coastal resources including coastal communities. We believe that the California Coastal Commission (CCC) by institutionalizing these impacts has exceeded the intent of the Coastal Act. The Coastal Act expressly recognizes that public access shall be provided: Section 30210 of the Coastal Act. “consistent with public safety needs and the need to protect public rights, rights of private property owners, and natural resources areas from overuse.” The historic coast villages in West Marin are man-made, artificial resources that need protection. Section 30001.5 Legislative findings and declarations; goals: “The Legislature further finds and declares that the basic goals of the state for the coastal zone are to: (a) Protect, maintain, and where feasible, enhance and restore the overall quality of the coastal zone environment and its natural and artificial resources.” We believe that the CCC is usurping local authority in addressing local issues. Article 1 Local Coastal Program Section 30500 Preparation: (a)” The commission's review of a land use plan shall be limited to its administrative determination that the land use plan submitted by the local government does, or does not, conform with the requirements of Chapter 3 (commencing with Section 30200). In making this review, the commission is not authorized by any provision of this division to diminish or abridge the authority of a local government to adopt and establish, by ordinance, the precise content of its land use plan.“ We also believe that the CCC has taken actions that have not been subject to required community participation. “(c) The precise content of each local coastal program shall be determined by the local government, consistent with Section 30501, in full consultation with the commission and with full public participation.” We are aware that there are other LCP impacts that have had insufficient or no public participation. The Point Reyes Station adopted Community Plan has five principal goals that are the foundations of the village plan. The LCP has in effect eroded or erased four of these goals, completely damaging the Community Plan without any public process to address these actions and their impacts to Point Reyes Station. The impacted Community Plan goals are: 1. Preserve the viability of Point Reyes Station as a small, rural, working town. 2. Carefully manage the impacts of tourism on the visual character of the historic downtown district. 3. Minimize the impacts of tourism on the everyday activities of the local population. 4. Create additional affordable housing for people employed locally. The coastal communities seek to preserve the historical and cultural character of their towns and do not support Coastal Commission’s efforts via the Local Coastal Plan Amendment process to impose “visitor-serving only” business zones in the small commercial centers. Coastal residents need their small local businesses and public gathering spaces to survive and thrive and to provide services to their communities – visitors enjoy these services and spaces, as well! Marin County also appears interested in enabling tourism in West Marin. A recent County sponsored consultant’s study of tourism included forecasting tourism visitation trends over the next 50 years, without independently measuring actual visitation, and in spite of acknowledging that the existing visitation data is limited, anecdotal, and unscientific. The consultant was also directed to assess the economic benefits to the County, without in turn assessing the impacts to the communities and the costs incurred/required to mitigate tourism’s impacts. TOURISM IMPACT MANAGEMENT ISSUES & IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTIONS The following specific impacts of burgeoning visitor access to coastal West Marin are: 1. Illegal and dangerous parking: When local communities are “at capacity”, coastal visitors ignore well-posted “no parking” signs, creating dangerous public safety conditions, limiting emergency vehicle response and generating ill-will in the communities they visit. The impact locally cannot be over-stated: in many West Marin communities, the residents are not able to access their local businesses or other services (post offices, libraries, community centers, etc.) In Bolinas, visitor vehicles often exceed the limited parking capacity of the core area, blocking residents from services in the core. When high visitation is anticipated, the Bolinas Fire Dept. has placed a fire-fighting vehicle in the core area in order to not be blocked by congestion in the event of an emergency. The Bolinas Public Utilities District (BPUD) prepared a plan to improve parking in the community, only to have the CCC reject their proposal. Along Highway One, east shore of Tomales Bay in the vicinity of Marshall, on weekends and summers visitors to seaside businesses arrive with or without reservations and exceed available on site parking. Cars are then dangerously parked along the highway in all directions. Suggestion: The local communities may benefit from more local authority and funding to manage parking, congestion, and community safety. As with the example at implemented at Muir Woods, restricting parking along the roadway in on Tomales Bay’s east shore may be the only feasible solution. 2. Overuse of limited wastewater disposal services: Most West Marin properties are served by septic systems that have limited capacity (even if built for commercial purposes) which regularly are over-used by visitors, creating a public health risk and imposing significant costs on the property owners. Even worse, many areas of West Marin are undeveloped or are county/state/national parks with bathroom facilities in centralized locations – human waste and associated waste products are accumulating on beaches, next to trails, in drainage ditches adjacent to open spaces, in vehicle pullout areas, etc. 3. Garbage and trash: The number of visitors has exceeded local community ability to clean up and dispose of garbage littered on the beaches and in other public areas. Local communities are struggling to find funds/personnel to clean up after visitors and properly dispose of garbage and/or recycling. After one day of weekend visitation day in Point Reyes Station trash cans throughout the town can be overflowing, causing trash to be left on the public sidewalks. The town has no publicly funded mechanism to deal with trash. Olema also cites trash as an issue. Suggestions: The villages may benefit from more authority and funding to address trash and other local community issues. It would be helpful to understand the options and implications for appropriate self-governance, such as Community Service Districts, etc. 4. Water: Most West Marin communities have very limited water supplies. The impact of increased visitation is straining those supplies and imposing increased operating costs on local water districts. Suggestions: Water demand and supply in each village should be assessed both for existing and future residents as well as anticipated tourism. 5. Traffic: West Marin roads are uniformly narrow and winding with minimal or no shoulders. Visiting drivers and tourists used to freeways, traffic lights and other traffic control devices are intimidated and tend to drive slowly or too fast. The increasing numbers of solo bicyclists as well as bicycle organizations on group rides adds to the congestion. Daily during the summer months and on sunny weekends throughout the year, traffic between our villages as well as within them is no longer an inconvenience but can be a dangerous situation. Olema is concerned about lack of enforcement of speeding along Highway One as well as cyclists who block the roads by riding adjacent to each other and not single file. Inverness, Inverness Park, and Point Reyes Station residents are concerned about occasional traffic congestion delays and its public safety impacts along Sir Francis Drake and Levee Road. On the worst days a 1.5 mile 5 minute trip from Inverness Park to Point Reyes Station has taken residents and visitors over an hour, blocking access for residents and emergency responders. The intersection of Levee Road with Highway One is a major bottleneck, with traffic backing up at the stop sign on levee Road and extending into Inverness Park. Suggestions: Some solution, whether it is a sheriff available to move traffic, a roundabout, or another means to maintain traffic flow during high visitation periods. Solving traffic issues will involve County and Caltrans jurisdictions. Adding bicycle paths along our narrow coastal roads should reduce automobile conflicts and increase safety. 6. Public Restrooms: Point Reyes Station has one public facility that is so heavily used the County had to add portable bathrooms. During weekends of heavy use, the septic system is overloaded and the solid waste tanks require pumping daily. While most restaurants have bathrooms for customer use, other take-out food facilities in Point Reyes, Olema, and Inverness Park do not provide public toilets. Olema lacks proper public restrooms and has provided portable toilets to help address the need. Suggestion: Sources of funding to develop and maintain facilities need to be identified, perhaps as part of Community Service Districts, Public Utility Districts, etc. 7. Directional Signage and Resources Mapping: Better information to direct visitors to coastal resource destinations and visitor services (bathrooms, picnic grounds) such as the Point Reyes National Seashore visitor center at Bear Valley, the visitor facility at Drakes Bay, and the Tomales Bay State Park with its bathrooms, picnic grounds, and swimming access, could improve facility access for visitors and benefit the villages. Suggestions: Coordinating with online/mobile mapping sites, sites as Google maps could result in more visitor awareness of service/resource locations in all the parks. This, plus directional signs, could disperse visitors and reduce the pressure on the limited resources and infrastructure in the villages. This is good opportunity for coordination between the Villages and the Parks. 8. Housing: In West Marin there is both a limited supply of housing (especially affordable housing) compounded by the reality that there is very limited developable residential land. Visitor oriented vacation rentals remove potential rental housing from the community and vacation homes also leave a community socially and culturally depleted. In Marshall, very few of the bay front homes are resident occupied. The land use element in Marin’s Local Coastal Program, requested by the CCC that prioritizes commercial development in existing residential/commercial mixed use zones further erodes the potential to increase the housing supply. Suggestions: Funding sources should be sought to help provide housing for local residents and policies need to explored and adopted to regulate vacation and short-term rentals. The CCC policy prioritizing commercial facilities in mixed-use housing/commercial zones should be deleted. WEST MARIN VILLAGES COMMUNITY FORUM: COMMUNITY LIFE AND TOURISM
Thursday, February 23, 6:00 Social; 6:30 Forum Dance Palace Hosted by the Point Reyes Station Village Association The Program Features: State Senator Mike McGuire and his Town Hall team Supervisor Dennis Rodoni and his Marin County team PRNS Chief of Interpretation John Dell’Osso. Representatives from: CalTrans, California Highway Patrol (CHP), California Coastal Commission and Point Reyes National Seashore. If you are a villager in any of the Marin coastal villages - from Muir Beach in the south to Tomales in the north, this community forum is for you. Our village associations are the closest thing we have to local governance, working closely with county government to protect our community life. Each village has a Community Plan, developed with local residents in collaboration with our county government, that spells out the village’s core values which define each vital community. The Community Plan is incorporated into the Countywide Plan, also called the general plan. This is the document that guides conservation and development activities. As Marin’s Countywide Plan says, "While [California law] establishes specific requirements for the contents of the general plan, within that framework each community has the latitude to design its own future." Come and meet folks who are struggling with the same challenges in other villages and learn from them. Share ideas. Build alliances. Question our government representatives about what they can do to help us preserve our community life. This is participatory democracy in action. Come. Participate. First Community Forum: Thursday March 10, 2016: DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND SEA LEVEL RISE
CLAM HOUSING SUMMIT: May 22, 2016 PRSVA to collaborate /support with CLAM Second Community Forum: Date to be decided - TOURISM: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR OUR COASTAL VILLAGES - PART 1. Panel and presentations by NPS, State Parks, GGNRA, Marin CO., Coastal village representatives. Third Community Forum: Date to be decided - Marin Supervisor District 4 Candidates Night. KWMR will record. Fourth Community Forum: Date to be decided - TOURISM: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR OUR COASTAL VILLAGES - PART 2 - A CONVERSATION AMONG NEIGHBORS. |
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