The County of Marin is currently updating the Countywide Plan (CWP) to meet the requirements of the State of California’s Regional Housing Need Allocation or RHNA (click here to read more about the RHNA and Marin County’s planning process). The first comprehensive round of public comments on drafts were due on June 30th. This commenting cycle is important to provide the County, Planning Commission, and Board of Supervisors with information on community feedback.
Most concerning in the Draft Housing Element is the proposal to change the environmental planning corridors (these corridors guide type of development and land-use based on physical geography of the County) and to rezone A60 agricultural conservation parcels in order to pave the way for development of more than 200 above-market rate homes!
These changes would set a precedent that Marin’s 50 years of sustainable community planning may be rolled back in the face of urban sprawl development pressure!
Decisions on future development must begin with the CWP’s policies and guidance, as has been upheld and strengthened by more than 40 years of case law. Unfortunately, under pressure with the RHNA timeline, the County departed from bottom-up community collaboration to top-down planning undermining the goals of our CWP, disregarding the time and effort of the public participating in the comprehensive CWP updates of the past, and reducing public confidence in community engagement and outreach.
Since January, EAC has been engaged in the public workshops surrounding the Housing and Safety Element updates of the CWP and this week organized a sign-on letter pushing back against the County’s plans to make significant changes to our CWP in this manner and drafted an organizational letter with comprehensive comments for consideration as the County moves forward with housing planning.
We anticipate the release of a Draft Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIR) in August that will be a programmatic analysis that will provide additional information and details on the environmental, community, and infrastructure impacts of the plans. EAC looks forward to digging into those documents when released and providing additional substantive comments.
In the meantime, it is important for the public to get engaged and remind our elected and appointed officials that they need to uphold the integrity of our CWP and not rollback conservation zoning under the pressure of the RHNA. There are better locations near transit, job centers, and services to plan for future housing than allowing urban sprawl to expand beyond the City-Center Corridor.
