Communities in Marin County rank among the least diverse and most segregated in the Bay Area, according to recent studies by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Last week, addressing these racial disparities, the Board of Supervisors approved a 70-page report called the “Marin County Race Equity Action Plan.” In the document, county administrator Matthew Hymel states, “Systemic racism remains a persistent threat to equity, achievement, and our county government’s goal of equality for all. Without intentional focus, public policies continue to reflect or repeat this history, continuing a system of disparity.”
Yet moments after they approved the action plan, the same supervisors accepted a draft of the Measure A spending plan that takes money from the poor and allocates it to some of the wealthiest, most politically connected, racially homogeneous and largest landowning families in Marin: ranchers.
A sales tax like Measure A will always be regressive—that is, the poor will pay a higher percent of their income than will medium-income and high-income groups. As such, the allocation of Measure A public funds should provide safe, healthy, outdoor spaces that are free and open to everyone—especially in communities that are underserved by parks, playgrounds and public spaces. These tax funds should not be granted to wealthy private ranching interests.
Race-based zoning, redlining and other exclusionary land policies have left our county with shameful disparities in opportunity. The Measure A conservation easement program is one of these policies, a glaring example of what Mr. Hymel describes as a public program that reflects or repeats systemic racism, continuing a system of disparity.
Upon initial glance, not one of the 12 agricultural conservation easements acquired with the help of Measure A funds was purchased from a landowner of color. Yet this cursory statistic betrays a darker story. The easement application for Measure A’s farmland preservation funds twice asks if a ranch “is likely to be converted to non-agricultural use in the foreseeable future.” Yet Measure A applications are consistently approved where the “threat of conversion to non-agricultural use” is no greater than a landowner’s desire to consolidate holdings, buy out partners and pass land wealth to heirs.
In fact, 75 percent of the 12 applications submitted for Measure A easement funds offer evidence that the ranch was at risk of conversion only insofar as the owner may have needed to sell his or her property at some point in the future. Our Measure A tax revenues have therefore been used to preserve the land wealth of some of the oldest and wealthiest families in Marin.
Not only has Measure A money been used to secure the passing of land estates between generations of these old-wealth families, but on three separate occasions, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust—the only applicant in Marin eligible to apply for the Measure A easement funds—has used Measure A to facilitate the new purchase of ranches by buyers that MALT deems appropriate.
Unfortunately, instead of creating opportunities for people of color, in each of these three land acquisition cases, MALT assisted historic, multi-generational white ranching families in purchasing the properties. In two of these acquisitions, MALT even facilitated the procurement of ranches by the heirs of a man who the Petaluma Argus-Courier called “the wealthiest man in Sonoma and Marin counties,” while one of those heirs sat on the MALT board. That extended family has now sold 11 easements to MALT.
The Trust for Public Land recently published a study that found that parks serving primarily nonwhite populations are, on average, half the size of parks that serve majority-white populations, and are potentially five times more crowded. The data further showed that if those non-white populations were also low-income, then parks, on average, were four times smaller. Shamefully, in Marin, the numbers seem to be exponentially more disparate. Consider the parks in Marin City in comparison to the 140-acre Stafford Lake Park, with its disc golf course and Measure A-funded bike park, or the 450-acre McInnis Park and its nine-hole golf course and multiple soccer fields.
Historic injustices, inequities and exclusionary land practices must be arrested and reversed. Allocating Measure A funds for multi-generational, white landowners to facilitate their grip on land wealth or, even worse, to help old-wealth families expand their enormous land holdings is anathema to efforts that challenge racism and inequality. Doing so prevents opportunities for people of color to acquire land, while further enriching the wealthy with a regressive tax that could be used in underserved neighborhoods.
Measure A should no longer fund conservation easement acquisition. Instead, let’s create new parks that people of all races and income levels might enjoy.
Matthew Barnes is a retired teacher. He lives in Lucas Valley.