League of Women Voters of Marin County

May 7, 2001

Mayor Al Boro and Members of the San Rafael City Council

City Hall

1400 Fifth Ave.

San Rafael, CA 94901

Dear Mayor Boro and Council Members:

The League of Women Voters of Marin County has long recognized that the

city-centered corridor of the county's general plan dictates that the St.

Vincent's/Silveira properties, which are included in San Rafael's sphere of

influence, are planned for development and housing, including desperately

needed affordable housing.

One of our members served on the St. Vincent's/Silveira task force from

September 1998 to May 2000, along with representatives of all the

stakeholders in the property. We are very pleased that they reached

consensus—and we are determined to defend the viability of their final

recommendations. That's why we are so distressed--and actually feel

betrayed--that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service created the study area

boundary of its proposed refuge without the slightest attempt to work with,

or honor, the task force, let alone the county and the city, which created

the task force and are considering its recommendations in updating their

general plans. All of these Marin planning processes were ignored by the

Service.

What's particularly troubling is that project leader, Marge Kolar,

acknowledged in an open forum last week that the Service knew about the

task force process, yet went ahead and drew the refuge boundary during 1999

without any consultation with the county, city, or the task force. Their

reasons for failing to communicate were entirely unsatisfactory. They

claimed the boundary was an "internal" matter and couldn't "go public

without the director's approval"—yet they worked closely with Marin's

environmentalists, actually using their map to include the St.

Vincent's/Silveira property west of the railroad tracks in the boundary.

Are these people part of the Service's internal staff? Or they part of the

public like the rest of us. It's clear to us that the Service was catering

to a favored constituency at the expense of all the other stakeholders in

the property.

There also is the issue of the scientific legitimacy of the Service's map.

By including the area west of the railroad tracks, the Service made a total

deviation from the map of the Habitat Goals Project that the Service stated

it would be consistent with. (That goals project report, by the way, is the

best available document for Bay Area wetlands research and planning, and the

Service was involved in its creation.) Again, the Service's recent defense

to the map deviation was not convincing and appears to have been made to

justify its actions after the fact.

The Service has had the task force recommendations since last December.

It has not yet answered a recent question from the League about what more

it could learn by restudying this area and protecting the habitat beyond

what the task force did.

As a result, the League's history, policies, and advocacy efforts dictate

that we support the city's resolution to ask the U.S. Fish & Wildlife

Service to withdraw the St. Vincent's/Silveira properties west of the RR

tracks from the wildlife refuge study area boundary.

Sincerely,

Donna Bjorn

Donna Bjorn

President