League of Women Voters of Marin County

February 20, 2001

Cathy Osugi

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

911 NE 11th Ave.

Portland, OR 97232-4181

RE: Mann Baylands National Wildlife Refuge

Dar Ms. Osugi:

The League of Women Voters of Marin County was recently made aware of a meeting held November 30.2000, at which USFWS heard public comment on its proposal to create a Marin baylands addition to the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. As an organization long and visibly active in matters that involve the balancing of land use and environmental concerns, the League regrets that it and many other community groups were not notified of the meeting.

While anticipating that you will schedule another meeting to hear those voices, the League thinks it important to express our thoughts and concerns at this time on both the. process and content of your study.

First, we do not understand why you are undertaking your own study of Marin bayfront properties while other planning processes are underway in the county for those same properties. The County of Marin and the city of San Rafael are in the midst of lengthy, public processes updating their respective general plans. In addition both are involved in updating the housing elements of their current general plans, due by the end of this year.

Your study area includes the St Vincent/Silveira properties, which lie within the city-centered corridor of the county's general plan, the corridor slated for development since the mid 1970s. In addition, they are part of San Rafael's sphere of influence and have long been regarded as prime housing sites by the city.

The study you propose would duplicate and, in fact, undermine the county and city processes now underway. The League, therefore, believes that your timing is inappropriate and suggests that you delay your proposed study until the work of the local jurisdictions is completed and you have had an opportunity to carefully review the result.

Second, the League. strongly objects to your including the area of the St. Vincent’s/Silveira properties west of the railroad tracks to highway 101 in your study. A study of the history of these properties and the broad-based efforts made to plan for their development would reveal how inappropriate that boundary is.

Two separate task forces, representing all the stakeholders in the properties, including the owners and the League, worked throughout the 1990s on policies to guide their development. The environmental constraints were a major focus of the work, and all current research was reviewed thoroughly. The most recent task force completed 18 months of work last year, with agreement on recommended amendments to the general plan of the county and the city for preservation and development guidelines for the properties. The report was accepted by the county and the city and forwarded to their staffs for inclusion in the general plan update processes.

The City of San Rafael recently sent you a copy of that final report; we ask that you review it in detail. In brief, the baylands east of the railroad tracks were protected from development, and the lands West of the tracks up to Highway 101 were slated for development of a community that included a large number of affordable units, while preserving approximately 70 percent of the site.

Main County has failed to provide its share of the state-mandated number of affordable housing units; providing housing on the St. Vincent’s/Silveira properties is crucial to achieving that requirement. The anticipated development also would go a long way in correcting the large imbalance in the. jobs/housing ratio in Marin that has contributed to personal hardships for Marin workers and a traffic problem on Highway 101 created by those unable to live close to their jobs.

These are issues that must be discussed in any consideration of a wildlife refuge boundary. That did not happen at the November 30 meeting.

The League believes that a satisfactory result in such a situation will occur only when the process followed is seen as fair by all interests, We ask, therefore, that USFWS hold another public meeting to hear comments from all segments of the Mann community. If the results of that meeting show that you do not have a community consensus to pursue your study at this time, we ask that you honor that decision.

Sincerely,

Donna Bjorn