Pushing forward a years-long process, county supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved three amendments to Marin’s 1982 Local Coastal Program and rejected two that remain the most controversial to allow for further modifications, following their staff’s recommendations.
West Marin residents poured into the public hearing, many expressing concern primarily with the two amendments that the board did not accept due to disagreements over the regulation of agriculture, village zoning, building restrictions and more.
Yet there was also a strong call from public speakers to abandon all of the amendments wholesale and to reclaim the process from the California Coastal Commission, which has continued to modify the county’s language before issuing its necessary approval.
That option sparked particular support from the ranchers and farmers who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, pointing to what they felt were new and burdensome regulatory requirements. “We tried to make it better, but I think we failed,” Sam Dolcini, who spoke on behalf of the Marin County Farm Bureau, said of the new L.C.P.
Numerous other stewards of coastal resources agreed, including representatives from the East Shore Planning Group, the Bolinas Community Land Trust and the Bolinas Community Utility District.
Jennifer Blackman, general manager for BCPUD, commended the county for its work on the update but said the project went “awry” once it went before the commission, whose staff “hijacked” the language.
“In our opinion, it’s a solution in search of a problem, because we don’t have a problem on the Marin coast,” she said. “The local people that live on the coast and the local agencies like ours are stewards of the coastal resources—we welcome visitors, we clean up their garbage, we provide them water, we provide them bathrooms, we open businesses and we absorb all of the impact on coastal resources and all these pressures that the visitors bring. That’s fine, but then we can’t struggle under a regulatory burden that makes it impossible for us to be nimble enough to be able to combat those pressures.”
Ms. Blackman suggested that rejecting all of the amendments was not a “zero sum game,” but rather an opportunity to reclaim the process to better reflect local priorities.
But the board voted to approve three of the five amendments under consideration, along with the modifications the commission has made since November 2016. Supervisors approved the entire land use plan, apart from the environmental hazards sections, for a second time (they had done so last summer, but made additional changes that the commission since rejected). They also approved the coastal permitting and administration sections of the implementation plan.
County staff will submit revisions to the rejected two amendments, which relate to agriculture and key definitions, to the commission later this year. Even then, the new L.C.P. will not take effect until the environmental hazards sections are completed. Staff said they plan to re-submit that language in 2019.
Supervisor Dennis Rodoni acknowledged the wide turnout and opposition from his district, yet emphasized the importance of moving forward with the process. “I understand the stress and [fear] that the ranching community is under right now and even our coastal residents—there’s some frustration there that I totally get,” he said. “I’ve also been worried that some of these concerns… are overwhelming and blurring our vision about the required updates that we need to do regarding our L.C.P. and the benefits that these revised amendments can bring to our communities.”
Rodoni said that keeping the 37-year-old document as is would be problematic in numerous ways, including that it does not address “sea-level rise, short-term rentals, farmstays, intergenerational housing and new environmental requirements.”
Acknowledging the compromises that citizens, ranchers and environmental groups have made throughout the process, he nevertheless implored the county to resolve the remaining issues—nine of which staff has flagged in particular—in the two offending amendments. He also said there were still opportunities to pull the plug on the process, though he was hopeful that collaboration could improve with the commission.
Had the board not voted to approve the three amendments, there were two other paths. The first was to accept all the amendments with the Coastal Commission’s current modifications.
Groups like the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin favored a blanket approval, citing a pressing need to move on to the environmental hazards portion. The county’s Collaboration: Sea-level Marin Adaptation Response Team, or C-SMART, program would be stalled without those completed sections, a letter to the board stated.
The board’s other option was not to vote on the amendments at all, ignoring the commission’s deadline of May 2. Under that scenario, all the amendments would expire and the current L.C.P. would remain in effect.
Tom Lai, assistant director of the Community Development Agency, outlined the benefits of the new program versus keeping the current L.C.P. indefinitely. These included new allowances for intergenerational housing, flexibility in building ag worker housing, strict controls for all types of environmentally sensitive habitat areas, more effective controls of polluted runoff and sediment, increased opportunities for affordable housing, a quicker and less expensive permitting process and more.
In a rare diversion from protocol, Mr. Lai included in his presentation a quote from the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” in order to describe the possibility of a new L.C.P. in Marin. “It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again,” he read.