$1.6M on housing plans forces Marin into corner
Marin County supervisors have decided to pay outside consultants $1.6 million to plan for a 19-fold increase in new housing mandated by Sacramento and the Association of Bay Area Governments (“Marin supervisors push back against huge state housing mandate,” Jan. 30).
Do supervisors know how unpopular such a plan will be? How many Marin residents will be willing to accept the increase in taxes, traffic and congestion? Will our communities want to see our services strained and our schools overcrowded?
The expected backlash will mean the supervisors will have to choose between forcing the consultants’ recommendations on the public or abandoning them altogether. If they want to keep their jobs, they will choose the latter.
Decisions like these are best decided on the local level, not by bureaucrats or unelected agencies. Marin officials need to cancel the consultants.
— Michael Hartnett, Greenbrae
State’s fast, good housing projects won’t be cheap
I am writing in regard to the need for increased housing in Marin. There’s an old construction theorem that I call “the three-legged stool of residential construction outcomes.”
First, we must consider the three options in construction: Fast, cheap and good. The unshakable rule of these three options is that the customer only can choose two of the three options. The third is always determined by the previous two choices. For example, if the consumer chooses fast and cheap, the resulting output produced will be devoid of quality.
For Marin, state officials in Sacramento have decided this is a “crisis.” By designating it a crisis, the first choice here is clearly fast and, apparently, mandatory. We can’t build shanty towns by code, so building-code compliance is mandatory. So Sacramento is clearly choosing the fast and good options.
By operation of the home construction theorem, this means that the housing projects will not be the remotest bit affordable. I find that ironic. This hellbent rush to build “affordable” housing will likely produce anything but affordability.
— Guy Palmer, Mill Valley
Water district should avoid hookup moratorium
The Marin Municipal Water District board’s proposed moratorium on new water service connections will have a devastating impact on Marin housing production (“Marin Municipal Water District delays decision on hookup pause,” June 3.).
Many projects that are earlier in the approval process will be left stranded, undermining years of planning for affordable housing and individual residences — all for a savings of one-thousandth of current water use.
MMWD can avoid this damage while still achieving sizable water savings by allowing new connections on the condition that new water service is not connected to landscape irrigation until the drought ends. This is the approach adopted by the North Marin Water District in April. It is also the approach MMWD proposed in 2017 in its Water Resources Plan 2040.
A moratorium on meters is punitive, unnecessary and will create a housing drought for years to come.
— John D. Wright, San Anselmo
School renaming process takes away from honor
In response to the letters to the editor, the Marin Voice commentary pieces and the IJ editorial on the name change for Drake High School, I feel the need to add my two cents. As a teacher of 30 years, having two daughters who attended Drake High and having done my student teaching there, I enthusiastically applaud the school being named after Archie Williams.
However, it should have been done back when the school was first named. The change now is a knee-jerk reaction that, in my view, actually takes away a bit from honoring Williams. Can anyone provide evidence that changing names and bringing down statues has brought about an end or even improvement to institutionalized racism?
We should be better than this and begin with electing and having representatives that can work on laws and policies that bring about positive change.
— Bob Lewis, Novato
Compared to New Mexico, SMART doesn’t stack up
The more I learn about regional transit, the less smart our Sonoma-Marin Area Regional Transit train appears to be.
For example, the Rio Metro Regional Transit District in New Mexico operates a light rail system from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, a distance of 64 miles, with a fare of only $8 one way. It takes as little as 1 hour 18 minutes. Compare this to SMART’s 41-mile journey from Santa Rosa to Larkspur (23 miles less than in New Mexico). That run takes 1 hour, 20 minutes and costs $9.50 one way.
New Mexico’s population is about 2.1 million. That tax base is considerably less than California’s on a per-capita basis. Yet somehow New Mexico is able to build and operate a more efficient regional transit system than we are.
— Tom Short, San Rafael
Country is disrespectful to those who served
On Memorial Day weekend, I drove into the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio and I began to cry wildly. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” I thought as I passed each row of tombstones.
Imagine scenes of soldiers dying for our freedom, for our democracy, our Constitution and our rights to vote, as well as to be a country “of the people, for the people and by the people.” Think about hundreds of thousands of men and women surviving wars only to be mentally or physically maimed for life. Remember our homeless veterans.
How have we respected these sacrifices? Were these sacrifices made so greedy corporations can get certain politicians to help them and their children to be excused from war? Former President Donald Trump, for example, was excused five times from the Vietnam draft. Were these sacrifices made to protect corporations from paying their share in taxes? Remember that Trump passed lower taxes for the rich and created loopholes so they don’t pay any real taxes.
We have disrespected the soldiers who died in wars, the veterans, all federal and state employees, all citizens and the police who protect the U.S. Capitol. It happened while Trump urged misinformed citizens to attack our constitutional process and Vice President Mike Pence.
Certain leaders in the Republican Party lied shamefully and support action that is threatening our democracy, our Constitution and our right to vote. They support Trump, who believed denials by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a socialist dictator, over our intelligence services after Putin’s officials hacked our election process in 2016.
I am fearful for the soul and heart of my country. As I read those names on the tombstones, I could only say that I am so sorry.
— Kathleen Andrianos, San Rafael
Trump is setting up his followers for more rage
Many may be astounded former President Donald Trump appears even more delusional than normal with his claims he’ll be reinstated in August when results of recounts in Georgia, Arizona and other states are completed. But since there is absolutely no legal way he could be reinstated regardless of the sham results of recounts by unqualified groups, I think this might be yet another “Trump Insurrection” attempt.
He is giving his mostly uneducated, ignorant followers false hope. He is clearly using his carnival-barker skills to channel their disappointment into rage when it doesn’t happen. We’ve seen this movie before. It doesn’t end well.
While Trump can count on no more than 25% of the U.S. population for support, we should all remember that Benito Mussolini seized control of Italy’s government in 1922 with only 20% popular support. Adolf Hitler did the same in 1933 in Germany with less than 30% support.
Modern societies have a perilous track record of ignoring ignorant cult-like minorities.
— Larry Lack, Novato
