Alex Easton-Brown says exactly what he thinks, which can make him sound off-the-wall or curiously insightful, depending on the topic and your point of view. He wants to stop almost all development, advertise West Marin’s traffic congestion to scare away tourists and stop county efforts to hire “the best and the brightest,” arguing that candidates who are 80 percent qualified are probably the better pick. So who is this guy?
Mr. Easton-Brown was born in Fresno to Catholic parents—a stockbroker dad and a homemaker mom—who had six children. He studied sociology, earning a master’s degree from the University of Washington in just five months, he said. He taught briefly at Fresno State University, but did not care much for it, frustrated by his disinterested students.
He ran for the state assembly seat in Fresno in 1972, and he recalled the heady experience of appearing onstage at a campaign rally with John Burton and Cesar Chavez.
“I was overwhelmed by the adoration of the crowd towards Chavez and being in the glow of that and witnessing it, and the crowd wanting me to get elected because it would help their cause. It was very powerful stuff. Maybe that got me hooked on politics,” he said.
But he lost that race.
A few years later, Mr. Easton-Brown purchased the three-acre parcel in Lagunitas where he lives today with his wife, a teacher. They decided she would be the breadwinner and he would care for their one son and work on the house. (He calls himself a “house
husband.”)
He ran in, and lost, state assembly races in 2006 and 2012, after which he turned his focus to local politics: traffic problems, county spending, the county’s use of consultants and other
issues.
Last week, the Light visited Mr. Easton-Brown at his Lagunitas home, where he spoke about those issues, along with housing, vacation rentals, the Local Coastal Program and more.
Point Reyes Light: Why are you running?
Alex Easton-Brown: I’ve been critical of the county government for years. Last summer a lot of people said, “Well, why don’t you run against Kinsey.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do it,” thinking it would be he and I, and that it would be pretty much a massacre, but we would talk about the issues. Then he decided to drop out and a lot of people jumped in, so that’s where we are now.
We have overcrowding, which for me is a real problem in Marin. It creates too much traffic. There’s too much development. There’s too many people. Of course, I came [here] so long ago. When I was at the Lagunitas Store, I’d see a car every half hour. I’m really spoiled.
Light: What policies are creating too much development?
Easton-Brown: There’s been a lot of office building. We’re overbuilt for offices and that draws people here to work from other counties, so we’re short of housing. Really the market controls who gets to live here. Those [forces] are beyond our control, unless you’re going to change the whole capitalistic nature of the real estate market. When people start talking about affordable housing—we’re built out, we don’t really have room for more housing. And affordable for whom? Middle-class working people? I’m trying to encourage the county to hire more Marin people instead of building housing for people who live outside the area.
Light: But isn’t one of the arguments that public-sector workers can’t afford to live here? Do you think people need to be paid more so they can live here?
Easton-Brown: One angle is more pay. But they took the job, knowing they weren’t going to be living here. I don’t think it’s the county’s obligation to provide housing. I think if people take employment here but live elsewhere, that’s something they need to figure out personally. It’s not something the county needs to get involved in.
Light: What about people who live here who say they can’t work for the county because they can’t afford it? Is there a solution to that?
Easton-Brown: Well, not really. My wife works in Richmond and she would’ve liked to continue working in Marin [after her job teaching adult education at San Quentin ended]. The school districts here weren’t really hiring and the only job she could find [at a private school] paid about a third less than the school districts so she wasn’t afforded that option either. She’s doing a cross commute with folks who want to live here. There’s some things there aren’t answers for.
Light: A lot of people in West Marin are talking about Airbnb and arguing that it is reducing housing stock.
Easton-Brown: I think it’s really unfortunate to remove housing stock. Of course Stinson has always been for rent part of the year on a weekly basis and such; I’ve stayed at places in Stinson for the week. It’s hard to control it, because capitalism kind of wins. They say well, we have a right to do business, and it’s very hard to stop them, and most municipalities haven’t been able to. It’s something that everyone is kind of coming to grips with.
Light: There are places like San Francisco and Tiburon that have created regulations. Do you feel the county as a whole should do something like that?
Easton-Brown: Yeah, I’d be open to it. It’s going to need to be citizen-driven. I think there’s enough energy for that out there. I haven’t heard anyone say, “Yay for Airbnb!”
Light: Do you think development is the only thing that drives more traffic?
Easton-Brown: No. My biggest complaint is that the county spends money attracting tourists to Marin, and West Marin and particular. I would stop that immediately. I would even try to discourage traffic by advertising how congested it is out here on the weekends. I would definitely stop spending money through the visitor’s bureau right away.
Also I’m concerned about the new coastal plan, about development on ranches, intergenerational housing. I’m concerned about the increased traffic that’s going to bring by having more people. The ranches have functioned all these years without intergenerational housing. Why shouldn’t I be able to do intergenerational housing? I’ve got six acres. Let’s say there’s a ranch family and Junior doesn’t want to ranch anymore. He says, “Dad, let’s start a cheese factory or B&B or winetasting. A vineyard.” Cattle has to be pretty hard work. So the potential for commercial development on ranches is really high, even though they are small operations. They would further drive the tourist angle, bringing more traffic. So I’m concerned about the coastal plan and I hope that some aspects are nixed when the commission takes that up.
Light: So you believe intergenerational housing should not be allowed at all?
Easton-Brown: Maybe second units within the square footage of the second unit ordinance or adding on room additions. MALT has been doing a good job helping ranches financially. I just don’t buy the argument that they need to make more room for the kids, because what are they doing now? I’m thinking of the well-being of the entire county.
Light: Back to tourist traffic. Some candidates have suggested implementing a new shuttle system for tourists. What do you think?
Easton-Brown: That sure doesn’t work. The only shuttle I have ever used is to the lighthouse and I don’t care for that one. I like to be able to drive there. A shuttle really forces a change in gears. West Marin is so nebulous and widespread: you go here and you go there. It’s not one destination. Again, some issues aren’t really resolvable. Every neat tourist place in the world gets ruined. I go to Europe a lot. My God, the crowds. The Mexican Riviera: I don’t bother to go to Mexico anymore. Plus the population has like tripled since the 40s or 50s and people have the resources to travel. What can we expect? I think Marin has too many people. I think the world has too many people.
Light: Would you say just no more development?
Easton-Brown: I feel second units and junior units and Habitat for Humanity projects, we can let that by. Remodeling is fine. [But] no more apartments, no more WinCups, no more major construction.
Light: We were talking about agriculture earlier. What do you think about the lawsuit against the park service regarding the ranch management plan?
Easton-Brown: I have no problems with the ranches being continued at the seashore. I am really upset about the loss of the oyster farm. I would do anything to get that reopened in that location the way it was, except better. Ranching is fine, aquaculture definitely.
Light: The county decided to try to intervene in the lawsuit. Would you vote the same way Kinsey did?
Easton-Brown: I think they should be involved, but I don’t think they should foot the cost in its totality. I think the ranches need to help the cost of fighting it. It’s their survival, too.
Light: You’ve talked about what you feel is the waste of paying for county consultants.
Easton-Brown: Every dollar spent on consultants they can’t spend on roads. Marin has high property valuations. The tax take is huge for a tiny county like this and yet the money is wasted in the strangest ways. Like the vegetation plan: they paid $400,000 for a consultant on the plan. Then they hired another consultant to look at the first guy’s work, for another $400,000. I said, “Well, this is mindless.” They’re up to $1.3 million now on repairing the Civic Center in consultant fees. They’re up to $6 million in total.
They hired a consultant to study soil sedimentation on my road for $60,000. If they spend that money on paving the road, there would be no sedimentation to study. The Public Works Department is big, and they are talented but they’re contracting out road building. I would have them do a lot of that in-house. It’s not rocket science. I see them tree trimming, which is necessary, but sometimes I see them do it a couple times a year. I start wondering how badly do those trees need to be trimmed over and over?
Some consultants we probably need because they have technical expertise that no one at the county does. But with all these people at the county, we should be able to do many of these studies ourselves. Come on. I have had graduate students that could probably do the work just like that. Or even regular college students if you steer them correctly.
Light: What are some other issues on your mind?
Easton-Brown: I know someone that used to live with Mrs. Buck before she died and I feel very strongly that she intended that money for “ordinary people” in Marin. I would like to free up the funds from these bureaucrats and organizations that very cleverly maneuvered their way to control the Buck funds. I want to free up those funds and put them to work, using the income to address poverty, the needs of ordinary people in Marin who are faced with the loss of jobs, kids’ dentistry—all the things she intended her money to be used for.
I propose using the empty half of Marin Commons at Lucas Valley Road and Highway 101—the Sheriff occupies half—as a homeless service center, where we can consolidate all the services for the homeless and alleviate this problem we have in downtown San Rafael. I was at the Sheriff’s Office picking up a legal document last year and I walked into the lobby and it was like a grand hotel, and I was thinking, where is the pool? I wandered around the unoccupied parts and there were huge rooms, kitchens and bathrooms. It would be perfect.
I object to the Sheriff’s acquisition of military equipment in a county where crime is almost nonexistent and almost all the people are law-abiding citizens. Because he is elected independently he feels he is independent of the Board of Supervisors. But we pay for the budget. He has a huge staff; I would definitely scale it back.
If you’re in jail and you want to make a telephone call, a private company called Global Tel Link has a contract with the jail and they kick back 40 percent of their profits to the Sheriff. They profit off poor people’s phone calls. It can be like $4 a minute or more just to call folks at home. To get out of jail, they need to contact friends and relatives. I went to the civil grand jury about this and they wrote a scathing report. San Francisco stopped doing that. I had to use [a public records request] to get documents from the Sheriff to see contracts for the commissary, which is a profit center where you sell little snacks to the inmates at an inflated rate. All the contracts had these kickbacks included. I actually had to use the county counsel because the Sheriff wouldn’t respond to my request.
Though generally I feel like we don’t need our own county counsel; we could farm that out to other attorneys. It’s a really expensive office.
I think it’s way too clubby down at Civic Center. It occurred to me that when they do a hiring search, they try to hire the best and the brightest. [But] county work, government work, it’s not rocket science, you know? When you get the best and the brightest, don’t you get a kind of prima donna? I think we can scale down. They could accept people who are less than 100 percent qualified. Eighty percent is okay for a government worker.
The 80 percent rule would flatten out the organizational structure and we could have more people working in a pool of peers, rather than a hierarchy. People in the pool could also learn the boss’s job. That would make the boss a little less secure in his own employment and make it easier to replace the boss if we choose to. In the peer group you would have people helping one another; they are not necessarily in competition. Of course I come at this from a sociological perspective from organizational studies. By making the people at the top less secure I think we can get rid of some clubbiness and encourage productivity. And hiring from Marin.
Light: Pesticide use?
Easton-Brown: Against it. I cleared my hills just by pulling it with a weed wrench. And some of them were really tall. You have to do it for a few years, but what a wonderful way to employ people. It’s actually very fulfilling work.