A Lagunitas resident is challenging Supervisor Dennis Rodoni to represent Marin County’s fourth district. Alex Easton-Brown received 5 percent of the vote when he ran in a crowded 2016 primary. Now, he has made the former San Geronimo Golf Course the central issue of his campaign, criticizing Supervisor Rodoni for persuading the board to use park funds to purchase the course in what he calls a “conspiracy to defraud the taxpayer.”
With ballots to be mailed to voters on Feb. 3, the two-man race will be a short one, and Supervisor Rodoni has a head start. He has raised $75,000 since announcing his plan to run for another four-year term, and he has another $25,000 left over from his last campaign. At a kickoff fundraiser, Mr. Easton-Brown raised $6,000; last week he launched a website to solicit more donations. The last time a District 4 incumbent lost his seat was in 1968, according to local historian Dewey Livingston.
Mr. Easton-Brown, who has a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Washington and taught the subject briefly at Fresno State, has run for office several times. In 1972, he won the Democratic primary for state assembly in Fresno but then lost to the incumbent. At the time, he spoke out about the Williamson Act, which gives tax breaks to agricultural landowners who agree to not develop their land for at least a decade. He saw the law as inequitable, subsidizing people who can later turn around and build.
After moving to Lagunitas, he ran in 1978 against five candidates for county assessor, as a critic of the real estate industry. He didn’t run again until 2006 and 2012, when he launched unsuccessful bids for state assembly in the Democratic primary.
After finishing fifth in the 2016 primary, Mr. Easton-Brown voted for Supervisor Rodoni because he was afraid his opponent, Republican Dominic Grossi, would give the ranchers too much clout. “I’m not against the ranchers, but I thought they were doing well and had plenty of political representation,” he said. “I didn’t think they needed their own guy in there.”
This time around, Mr. Easton-Brown declined to indicate his party preference, saying he is “disgusted” with the timidity of the Democratic Party. “They don’t know how to say no to campaign donations and are captured by special interests,” he said.
Mr. Easton-Brown first visited the valley in 1968, after he and a friend picked up a hitchhiker in San Rafael who said he had a cool place to show them. His friend later bought a house there, and he began looking for property to build his own. He didn’t find the degree of privacy he desired until 1975, when he picked up another hitchhiker whose mother had three acres for sale for $23,000. The property was overgrown, but it had a view and a water meter.
He built a treehouse first, eventually adding rooms and a concrete septic tank. “As the family got larger, the house got larger,” said Mr. Easton-Brown, who raised two kids with his wife, a retired schoolteacher. His son passed away this fall, and his daughter lives in Novato.
Since moving to Marin, Mr. Easton-Brown said he has watched the county government grow less efficient and less imaginative. His experience seeking building permits and paying fees cemented his views.
When he sought to build an addition in 2006, county employees told him his septic system wasn’t big enough. He disagreed, and hired an engineer who backed him up. But “the county just badgered and bullied me into putting in a high-tech, cross-filter system for $40,000 when I didn’t need it,” he said. On top of that, he has to pay $500 a year to have the system inspected.
“The county keeps hiring people and they keep inventing fees for the people they hire,” he said. “I would cut out the deadwood, featherbedding and unnecessary bureaucracy that has evolved over 44 years.”
Instead of seeking out the best and brightest employees, Mr. Easton-Brown believes in hiring local employees who need jobs. By hiring in Marin, the county would reduce traffic, boost employment and raise the housing stock, he said.
He also would shrink the number of high-paid employees and give department heads less control. “I’d like to flatten out the hierarchy a little bit,” he said. “You make sure the organization functions the way it should with the least excessive amount of manpower and hierarchy you need.”
Mr. Rodoni acknowledged that county government—with 2,600 employees and a $500 million budget—is clumsy sometimes. “It’s a huge economic engine, and, like all economic engines, some parts run better than others,” he said. “And it’s our job as elected officials to make it a more efficient engine.”
As for the golf course, Mr. Easton-Brown claimed the county inflated the price by over $2 million, appraising the land at its highest value rather than as a golf course. Although the county’s intent has always been to preserve the land as a park, he worries a future board could change the zoning to allow for a commercial use.
“The golf course hovers over [my campaign] because my positions have not changed, but they have all become secondary to the golf course issue,” he said. “I plan to keep hammering away on how [the county] put this plan together in secrecy over six months, and what a loss it would be for this parcel to be dismembered.”
The Trust for Public Land bought the 157-acre property for $8.85 million with the intention of holding it until the county gathered that money. But a lawsuit from golf advocates led to a court ruling that the county would have to conduct an environmental review before purchasing the property. The county backed out of the deal, and the trust is now engaged in a public scoping process to determine the land’s future.
Mr. Easton-Brown doesn’t believe the trust’s assertion that it met extensively with golf advocates, investors and experts, only to find no financially viable option. “They are trying to bully us into accepting their vision of the way they think things should be here,” he said.
Measure D seeks to amend county development code and the San Geronimo Valley Community Plan to require voter approval to change golf as the primary use of the property. Because the property is privately owned, the measure cannot force the trust to operate a golf course—but it would limit the trust’s options.
For his part, Supervisor Rodoni opposes Measure D because he doesn’t think the entire county should have a say in the valley’s community plan. “I believe that the Trust for Public Land has done a good job in their ownership, and I think Measure D would interrupt that open and transparent process to see what the next steps are there,” he said.
The supervisor defended the county’s private negotiations over the property as standard practice for real estate purchases. As is allowed under the Brown Act, negotiations between the trust, the former owner and the county were kept private until they reached an agreement.
He called Mr. Easton-Brown’s conspiracy claims ridiculous. “It was all done in good faith,” he said. The Measure A funding was designated for land acquisition, so the board was carrying out the will of the voters, he said.
Supervisor Rodoni said he is confidently running for re-election on his record, which includes finding and developing affordable housing in West Marin through the passage of Measure W, which raised taxes on overnight guests. If he is re-elected, he said he will run again in 2024 only if he feels like he is doing a productive job. “One at a time,” he said.
The deadline to register to vote in the March 3 election is Feb. 18.