Other Detailed Position Statements

By Garry Lion

Since we are limited to three position papers, I have included here my positions on 1) Affordable Housing, 2)Emergency Preparedness, 3)Transportation, 4) City-Public Communications and 5) A Greener City.

I have long supported affordable housing programs to help our local workforce, low income residents and seniors. But the newly mandated state/ABAG goals for Mill Valley require 196 affordable housing units during the next seven years. MAPP projects only 31 affordable units over the next 30 years, just 16% of the seven-year goal. If the City only pursues a 20% inclusionary affordable housing strategy, we would have to build almost 1000 new housing units in town in the next seven years, an unaccepted burden. Instead we need to develop alternative strategies for negotiating more realistic goals and/or better programs for achieving the goals, such as:

• Negotiating reasonable goals from the State/ABAG through the League of California Cities (the organization for which I revived its North Bay Division and served as President during my first term) to reflect the dearth of limited remaining build-able land in Mill Valley.
• Further amnesty programs to add currently illegal second units to our affordable housing stock.
• Requiring, in any new very large homes, affordable second unit(s) which might house their domestic staff or be rented.
• Developing an affordable housing project (such as Pickleweed or Shelter Hill in the 1980's) if we can find some land (perhaps surplus school property) and funding through the Marin Community Foundation.
• Updating our City ordinances to reflect our current inclusionary policy (20% low or very low income affordable housing), but base it on 20% of the square footage rather than 20% of the units (since the affordable units are always tiny), and in-lieu fees for any partial units required but not built.
• Housing trusts
• Voucher systems

I was the Mayor in 1989 when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit, and we were lucky to escape major damage. We need to do everything we can to prevent and minimize the damage from natural catastrophes, specifically storms/flooding, wild fires and earthquakes.

I worked extensively on both efforts (mid-90s and 2006) to extend the Municipal Services Tax for street repair and vegetation management. In the latter effort, we achieved a 75% voter turnout plus a 75% approval rate for continuing the tax. This is a critical fire prevention/evacuation measure which reduces the fuel load, cuts fire breaks and improves evacuation routes. The City also should support restoration of our steps, paths and lanes for emergency evacuation (as well as routes to schools, shopping and transit).

The City needs to broadly support education programs for our citizens such as CERT training, BePreparedMV.org and Get Ready to minimize risks and prepare to survive disasters and emergency situations created by natural threats. We also need to get our business community more involved in all our emergency preparedness programs to ensure they are prepared to survive and are able to support our residents after a disaster.

I am particularly concerned about the 2006 New Years morning flooding in the lower Miller/Sycamore Triangle neighborhoods where property damage was much greater than if the residents had received some early warning to evacuate their property. As we saw in the recent Flood Control District/City Public Works presentation, besides thorough creek-bed maintenance to remove obstructions, stopping future floods will require many years of infrastructure improvements to eliminate constriction points in the creeks. So, I would like to see a much better early warning system/process in place by next winter for forecasting potential flooding in the Sycamore Triangle and Lower Miller neighborhoods. As a mechanical engineer by training, I think the Public Safety Dispatcher could monitor certain indicators of potential flooding (e.g., rain intensity in the watershed, saturation level of the soils, tide levels, creek levels) and contact an on-call hydrological engineer for a professional decision concerning evacuation.

Transportation

Traffic and parking have long been flash points for resident's concerns. This has certainly been well demonstrated in all the debates about the level of development on Miller Avenue.

The City needs to complete the update of the Circulation Element of the General Plan soon. This is the overall, comprehensive plan for transportation around and from/to the City, considering all modes of transportation. The consultant who has responsibility for its completion was diverted to be the traffic consultant on the MAPP process the last several months.

We also need to complete the long overdue Downtown Parking Study. I received a draft of the study on October 26th because I am a member of the Downtown Parking Study Committee. It unfortunately does not have any breakthrough recommendations. It just assures us we don't have a downtown parking problem, but we ought to discontinue free parking on Saturday and enforce meters 6 days per week to avoid confusion.

I strongly support in concept a shuttle bus. The City is in the process of applying for federal grant pilot project to realistically evaluate shuttle bus alternatives. We need to negotiate the appropriate scope of the routes with the County to ensure it connects with other high usage transit links.

Meanwhile, as mentioned above under the MAPP position, I believe we should selectively move forward on Miller Avenue improvements, many of which are safety and ambiance related and not tied to the level of development. There are Measure A funds prioritized for our use on Miller Avenue to install cycle lanes, to improve pedestrian walks and cross walks and to rationalize and calm vehicle movements, but we might lose them if we have any prolonged delays in finalizing the entire MAPP.

We also need to continue to restore our City's steps, paths, and lanes as important alternative routes to schools, shopping and transit. These may also prove invaluable for emergency evacuation.

City-Communications Communications

The City needs to improve its overall communications with the public. I think we should do at least the following four things:

• We should web-cast all public meetings of the City Council and Planning Commission. We will have to see the costs and storage requirements for whether they can be aired live or taped for later replay. Perhaps a combination of these will be appropriate.
• The City's new website (scheduled for release in November) will have the capability to present a newsletter describing all the current activities of the City government. Resident should have the opportunity to sign up with their email address to receive a high level summary of the newsletter and click on links to the newsletter if they want to read about something in more detail on the website.
• We should continue to have quarterly town hall meetings with the City Council to discuss issues of interest to the public. These should be led by a third party facilitator similar to the most recent one which focused on MAPP.
• We need to find a better formula for a more satisfying interaction with the public during public meetings. Confining public input to public open time on each agenda item feels very constricting on complex issues. I don't have an answer yet with which all the Councilmembers will be comfortable, but we should be able to do better.

I am the Chair of the upcoming Green Business forum for the Southern Marin, which will be hosted by the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce. We are encouraging our local businesses to become certified as Green Businesses. As a symbol of our support for green business in general, the Chamber is raffling a Honda Civic hybrid car this year as a major fundraiser for our nonprofit causes.

Yahoo recently ran an Internet survey which concluded Mill Valley was the 4th Greenest City in the United States based on the eco-friendly behavior of our residents. The City purportedly received 5000 Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs as an award, and I hope these will be distributed to our residents soon.

A huge proportion of our greenhouse gases come from our motor vehicles, so I am hoping in addition to the Chamber's symbolic gesture of raffling an highly fuel efficient hybrid automobile, the shuttle bus concept will take many other fuel hungry SUV's on our streets. I also support the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign resolution committing the City to determine a baseline and set targets to reduce our community's greenhouse gases.

I also support in concept a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) allowing homes and businesses to buy power from the CCA or PG&E to promote increased use of renewable energy. Mill Valley, along with the other cities and County of Marin, is in the process of investigating the creation of a CCA and I support continuing Mill Valley's participation in this investigation.

Finally, as Chair of the Chamber's Green Business Forum, I will strive to minimize the unnecessary consumption of natural resources during my campaign. I will NOT use campaign yard signs to advertise my campaign regardless of how many others do. I will maintain a campaign website (GarryLionForCityCouncil.com) with a thorough statement of my qualifications and positions, as well as an opportunity for supporters to offer endorsements, testimonials and campaign donations. I will use electronic means to communicate with the public as much as possible. But I know some residents might not use email, so some written communication will also be necessary, but only one campaign brochure will be mailed.