West Marin’s wild and rural expanses cover more than half of the county’s land area, and for nearly a century, all of Marin’s major fast-growing fires have burned here. But the county’s new wildfire agency has neglected West Marin, a citizen’s oversight committee found. In its first year, the ambitious Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority took in $19.7 million in tax revenue, but a few impediments are still blocking the agency from undertaking work like fuel breaks and evacuation route clearance around coastal villages, where it may be most vital.
Overall, the agency has met its mandate to spend tax dollars appropriately, the oversight committee found. But geographically speaking, there is a large exception. “West Marin may have fewer structures, but it has more [wildland-urban interface] and wildlands that need treatment,” the committee wrote in its year one report on the M.W.P.A. West Marin’s small, understaffed local fire agencies and its strict environmental regulations mean that the area needs more help, the report found.
An upcoming coastal permit could clear the way for a major project—vegetation clearing along evacuation routes in Inverness, Bolinas and Stinson Beach—but the authority is also working on a broad program that would obviate the need for individual permits.
Mark Brown, the M.W.P.A.’s executive officer, says he and his staff “wholeheartedly agree” with the oversight report’s findings. Yet two key barriers have prevented West Marin from getting the attention it needs.
The first is a requirement that an average of 80 percent of the funds generated by the wildfire prevention tax, Measure C, must be spent in the same zone where they were generated. The clause means that, without careful consideration, M.W.P.A.’s spending could skew toward areas with denser populations—or pricier properties—and away from sparsely populated, fire-prone areas.
Just under six percent of Measure C’s tax revenue comes from West Marin.
“The money generated in that area by the tax isn’t nearly enough to address the problems that exist in that area,” said Jordan Reeser, a Marin County Fire captain.
According to Mr. Brown, the authority can overcome this problem by pooling the remaining 20 percent of funds from the county’s other zones to pay for work in West Marin. “I think that 80 percent clause actually gives us the flexibility we need to get the work done in West Marin,” he said.
But another barrier has stifled the authority’s wildfire prevention projects in the coastal zone, a 48,250-acre swathe that includes all of West Marin’s coastal villages. Throughout the county, vegetation management projects have proceeded with notices of exemption under the California Environmental Quality Act. But work within the coastal zone is under more scrutiny, especially in so-called environmentally sensitive habitat areas. M.W.P.A.’s member agencies must secure coastal permits before any projects can begin.
“It’s two years in now, and we still haven’t been able to spend any of the core money in the coastal zone,” said Mr. Rees-er, who has been managing regulatory compliance for the county fire department. “We’ve been trying to prepare for the day that we get the green light.”
In ESHA areas, a biologist must inspect vegetation and workers must receive special training before they go in with chainsaws and brush cutters to prune trees, remove dead shrubs and invasive species, and use riding mowers to trim grasses up to 15 feet from the roadsides. Inspections and monitoring also add to the expense of the work.
A mid-August hearing with the county’s planning department will likely grant the Marin County Fire Department a coastal permit to use M.W.P.A. funds to clear vegetation along 16.5 miles of evacuation routes on 19 roads in Inverness, Inverness Park, Bolinas and Stinson Beach.
But the agency is preparing for a broader fix. Mr. Brown says the M.W.P.A. is looking to Santa Cruz and San Mateo Counties as models for a Public Works Plan, a comprehensive document that authorizes vegetation removal in the coastal zone on a programmatic basis, superseding a county’s Local Coastal Program requirements.
The authority is working with its environmental consultants to create a draft P.W.P., which will need to be approved by the California Coastal Commission. The P.W.P. will be finished this fiscal year, Mr. Brown said, in time to sanction new projects in West Marin in 2023 and 2024.
Uncomfortable questions remain about the authority’s closer-to-home defensible space program. Courts have held that, in some cases, coastal permits may be required for the removal of native trees and shrubs, even on residential properties.
“That line is so blurry,” Mr. Brown said. Since its inception, the authority has prompted questions about permits and environmental impacts simply because it is new, he argued. “The M.W.P.A. is having to deal with the reputation that we’re going to clear cut,” he said. “We’re in the same regulatory space as everyone else, we just have a much brighter spotlight on us.”
Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, who will take over as M.W.P.A.’s board president this month, said he is working with county staff to create a list of vegetation removal activities, like limbing up trees and trimming grass, that are always acceptable within a certain distance of a home. “I do know there’s some angst around it, but it’s just common sense really,” he said.
The M.W.P.A. is a relatively young organization, fire officials said, and these issues and imbalances will smooth out over time.
Another growing pain the agency has experienced is the large proportion of unspent money. The citizen’s oversight committee recommended that the authority establish a formal policy for funds that go unspent by member agencies.
“For example,” the committee wrote, “if any funds allocated to a particular project in the work plan remain unspent, the policy might require that such funds be rolled over into the next fiscal year, restricted to local or defensible space projects.”
The authority’s spending structure allocates 60 percent for core projects, which includes vegetation management and evacuation route work, 20 percent for local projects such as chipper days executed by member agencies, and 20 percent for defensible space evaluations—probably the most visible M.W.P.A. work in West Marin so far.
Mr. Brown said the defensible space fund has been exhausted every year, but in the first year, the authority spent just 56 percent of its core projects budget. The authority also chose to give local agencies leeway to rollover their unspent money at the end of the year, banking it for future projects, rather than spending it at the end of the year just for the sake of spending.
For example, the Inverness Public Utility District, restricted in its ability to clear vegetation or mount other large-scale projects because of coastal zone restrictions and its proximity to federal and state parks, plans to use the money to purchase a new wildland fire engine. The Stinson Beach Fire Protection District, unable to begin a fuel break because of a pending environmental review with the National Park Service, will use its money for a new siren and wildfire notification radios. The oversight committee recommended that M.W.P.A. require more specific allocations for funds that rollover to the next fiscal year.
Next year, officials hope the regulatory wall of the Coastal Act will come down thanks to the programmatic coastal permit, and more aggressive work will take place in West Marin. Armed with the P.W.P., the authority will fund more evacuation route clearance in Inverness and Bolinas, vegetation management in the Rancho Santa Margarita area and a firebreak above Avenida Balboa in Stinson Beach.
“We’re going to be looking for a lot of contractors,” Supervisor Rodoni said. “It’s a good time to be in vegetation management.”