As a California Coastal Commission hearing on Marin’s Local Coastal Program draws near, commission staff have released preliminary modifications to the county’s latest plan, on rules relating to agriculture to coastal villages to new development, some that are sure to ruffle feathers.
Particularly significant are modifications made to the county’s recently proposed regulations on development in hazardous areas. Changes to sections on agriculture were more modest, though at least one change is bound to frustrate farmers and ranchers.
Coastal staff stress that the modifications, released in two batches over the past month, are preliminary. “Please note that these draft modifications must be understood as preliminary only and we reserve the right to change them, whether due to conversations with County staff, stakeholders or otherwise,” a coastal planner, Shannon Fiala, wrote in an email to the Community Development Agency last week.
Updated changes will accompany a staff report to be released before the hearing, now set for November in Half Moon Bay—to the chagrin of many stakeholders who would prefer a meeting in Marin.
Jack Liebster, the county’s planning manager, said county staff is still reviewing the more than 300 changes. But for him, two major issues stood out: expanding permitting requirements for agriculture and in hazard areas—requirements the county believes could be too burdensome.
A couple of years ago, coastal staff introduced a concept called “redevelopment” in areas subject to hazards, such as sea-level rise and bluff erosion. The idea refers to when a building is altered so much that it should be treated as new development, with all the attendant permitting. Redevelopment could have one of three triggers: a 50 percent or more increase in floor area, the alteration of 50 percent or more of any given major structural component, or “additions and alterations” that result in a 50 percent or more increase of a structure’s market value, with changes tracked cumulatively over time, starting from 1977.
Those provisions concerned the county staff, which has argued that the concept of redevelopment does not appear in the Coastal Act and worries that it could dissuade people from raising homes in flood-prone areas. Last month at a Planning Commission hearing, the general manager of the Bolinas Community Public Utility District emphasized the concerns. “This dramatically expands the types of projects that would be subject to local coastal permitting processes, which would really increase costs to homeowners,” Jennifer Blackman said.
The county had struck the concept from the plan last year, but coastal staff have now added it back in. In a note on the modifications, coastal staff wrote that the definition of redevelopment is “consistent with the Commission’s approach to LCP planning on this point statewide. The intent is to identify when a project is no longer a repair or maintenance project but rather a new project requiring increased evaluation under the LCP.”
A new concept also popped up in the recent changes: “sandy beach management.” In light of the county’s vulnerability assessment of coastal areas—released late last year as part of Marin’s sea-level rise analysis program called C-SMART—commission staff proposed that the county create “sandy beach management plans” for each sandy beach in the county, such as Stinson Beach, Bolinas Beach and Dillon Beach. Each beach plan would enumerate “sandy beach values” and develop “enforceable parameters for development that is located in the area where development might affect such values.” The regulation would also require the county to at least consider creating a new zoning overlay district for sandy beaches.
Aside from the hazards section changes, coastal staff also altered the framing of principally permitted uses in the zoning district that comprises most village downtown areas, which mixes commercial and residential uses.
Last year, residents pushed back against rules around village “commercial cores,” a new concept that would prohibit new residential uses on the ground-floor, street-facing sides of buildings in defined core areas. Many vented their frustrations at any restriction on residential use and the prioritizing of commercial uses, as West Marin suffers from a dearth of residential housing and many say tourism takes a heavy toll on community resources and identity.
When the county submitted its proposed coastal plan, it differentiated between the “core” and the rest of the zoning area. In the core, they said, commercial uses would be the principally permitted use, meaning county decisions can’t be appealed to the commission unless the project falls within a special geographic area. Outside the core, residential use would be the principally permitted use.
But coastal staff rewrote the definition such that commercial uses are the principally permitted use in the entire zoning district, though the ground-floor, road-facing rules still apply only to the core.
And while the commission’s changes clearly state that existing ground-floor, road-facing residences in the core can be maintained and repaired, it’s unclear if those residences can be replaced. In the county’s submittal, replacing those residences would have been allowed. Additionally, in the county’s version, a residential use could be allowed in these ground-floor, road-facing sides of buildings if the county made a finding that it “maintains and/or enhances” the character of the community. The commission staff added that such a situation would require a use permit.
Another change is sure to frustrate agriculturalists: a requirement for a permit each time operators switch the type of agriculture they engage in, such as from grazing to row crops.
Debate has swirled around that requirement for a couple years. Local environmentalists and agriculturalists discussed it at a series of meetings convened by the Marin Conservation League in 2015. The two sides came up with a concept that was adopted in the county’s version of the L.C.P. Instead of requiring a permit for changing the type of agriculture, the county listed more specific actions that would require a permit, like terracing or developing a new water source.
But that list of triggers was deleted in the recent modifications in favor of language more generally requiring a permit for a change to the intensity of use.
At last month’s Planning Commission meeting, Bolinas farmer Peter Martinelli called out such a requirement as problematic. “Our generation is okay. We can survive,” he said. “The whole reason I have been spending seven years in these hearings is because of the new people coming up, who may not have the resources, and want to do something different on a piece of land, and suddenly they’re faced with thousands and thousands of dollars in reports and permit processes.”