Point Reyes Light - August 26, 1999
Planning Commissioners hear grave concerns over Bolinas driveway
Marin planning commissioners this week insisted they don't have the authority to decide whether a Bolinas couple has a right to enter their property through the town graveyard, but offered to consider ways to resolve the driveway controversy.
Friends of Bolinas Cemetery, a group of residents and cemetery plot owners opposed to the driveway, had asked the Planning Commission to suspend the construction of a house and other buildings on the property of Alex and June Kleider, who claim to own an easement through the neighboring graveyard.
About 40 Bolinas residents, mostly Friends of Bolinas Cemetery members but some Kleider supporters, attended Tuesday's public hearing, which was delayed about 20 minutes by an unrelated bomb scare at Civic Center.
Ostensibly, the cemetery group was appealing the Kleiders' construction without a design review of an innocuous generator shed. But after nearly two hours of public testimony about the graveyard roadcut, Planning Commissioners agreed the Kleiders' controversial driveway deserves further consideration.
"This is not a typical project," conceded Alex Hinds, director of the county Community Development Agency. "It does deserve carrying over to see if we can bridge the differences here."
The decision to continue the hearing on Sept. 27 was in some ways a concession by commissioners that in 1997, when it approved the driveway, the county had failed to consider possible sensitivities about allowing an access road through the graveyard.
Noting that county staff could not have been expected to investigate title reports to determine if the Kleiders actually own an easement through the graveyard, Commissioner Ray Buddie said the issue nevertheless deserves a thorough public review, however belated.
"Perhaps no one at the time knew how horrible this would look," he said. "This is not right.... It is not appropriate."
Although Commissioner Jan Alff-Weigel agreed in principle that it is inappropriate to place a driveway through a cemetery, she insisted that the Planning Commission can't decide whether the Kleiders have the legal right to do so.
"The Planning Commission is not authorized or qualified to settle matters of law," she said. "Don't bring these issues of ownership to us."
The Bolinas Cemetery Corporation and Friends of Bolinas Cemetery have sued the Kleiders to remove the driveway, claiming the cemetery board mistakenly and illegally granted the couple a driveway easement.
But attorney Kent Khtikian, who represented the Kleiders at the hearing, argued that Friends of the Bolinas Cemetery were inappropriately seeking a preliminary injunction from the Planning Commission.
To get an injunction in court, Khtikian said, Friends of Bolinas Cemetery would have to prove the likelihood of winning their case and post a bond to compensate the Kleiders if they didn't. "Please do not allow yourselves to be used as a device or tool for this strategy," he said.
Besides, Khtikian added, the county approved the driveway in 1997, so the window for filing an appeal lapsed long ago. "The Kleiders have been using the easement for the last four and a half years," he said. "Everyone knows about it."
Since making a roadcut through the graveyard, the Kleiders have endured the community's wrath for disturbing property that had long been neglected and left overgrown, said Margot Patterson Doss, a Horseshoe Hill Road neighbor. The community's fuss over the graveyard driveway, she said, is "arbitrary."
But Friends of Bolinas Cemetery and their supporters testified otherwise, protesting a private driveway running through a nearly 150-year-old graveyard that many described as "sacred space."
"It just breaks my heart," said Terry Camiccia, whose mother is buried there. "My heart is broken. It's just not fair."
Dr. Alex Kleider told commissioners that he would not have built the driveway if his property was accessible from Olema-Bolinas Road. "If the road from the bottom can be brought up, we'd not be adverse to that," he said. "If it was easy, we'd do it."
Although county planners said they could offer some modifications or alternatives to the Kleiders' graveyard driveway, Commissioner Alff-Weigel suggested that no compromise will satisfy the driveway's opponents. "I don't think putting a band-aid on it will help at all," she told staff.
Like many other commissioners, Alff-Weigel said she was outraged that Friends of Bolinas Cemetery sent a 20-page argument with 11 attachments to some commissioners' homes last week, a tactic she described as "highly improper."
"I'd like to express my extreme displeasure at finding this supplement at my home," she told Friends attorney Neil Sorensen, who sent the package. "Please honor our privacy," she said. "Never do that again."