Dick Spotswood: A look at 2007's local political winners and losers

Staff Report
Marin Independent Journal
Article Launched:07/28/2007 11:06:51 PM PDT
Dick Spotswood

IT IS TIME TO assess the midyear winners and losers in Marin's cavalcade of politics and government.

The winners include:

-Fairfax. No Marin government has improved as much as Fairfax. After a decade of bickering leading to constant staff turnover, Fairfax is enjoying a period of stability. Credit is due both to its council and to new Town Manager Linda Kelly. Instead of sniping at each other, council members are spending productive time turning the city into an effective regional environmental leader. Using a velvet glove, Kelly is gradually molding the financially strapped town into well-managed shape.

- San Rafael's political process. The Mission City has a solid City Council whose members all have been in office for more than a decade. There have been no competitive elections for council or mayor in years. Vital elections are a necessary mechanism allowing the citizens to air grievances and debate their community's future. The retirement of council members Gary Phillips and Paul Cohen creates the dynamic to provide November's election with multiple qualified candidates, each with a different approach.

-Sutter Health. The Sacramento-based not-for-profit chain soon will vacate Marin General Hospital, a facility in need of huge funds for seismic upgrades. Simultaneously, Sutter is positioning itself to scoop up the cream of Marin's medical business by expanding its Novato Community Hospital and creating stand-alone surgery and outpatient centers. Sutter will make big bucks by leaving the dirty work of carrying for the indigent and providing necessary but nonlucrative services such as maternity care to the dysfunctional Marin Healthcare District.

- Supervisor Hal Brown and the county's Public Works Department are both winners and losers. They achieved passage of a fee that will help pay for a comprehensive flood-control project to address flooding which has long ravaged the Ross Valley. This victory should have been a shining achievement. Instead it was marred by an election process that is now widely regarded as broken.

Losers must include:

-The Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit District. The brouhaha over the revival of rail freight service on the now dormant Northwestern Pacific Railroad created a hue and cry in Novato over the fear of long freight trains loaded with Sonoma's trash. SMART will have a difficult time recapturing popular support in Northern Marin unless it can satisfactorily calm the public before a commuter rail sales tax reemerges on the 2008 ballot.

- Affordable housing advocates. They took a big hit when Marin's Planning Commission limited the combined St. Vincent's School-Silveira Ranch properties to a maximum of 210 housing units. Unless overturned next month by the Board of Supervisors on appeal, that decision spikes effort to build senior housing and a smattering of affordable units on St. Vincent's 673-acre site.

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Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley shares his views on local politics every Sunday in the IJ. His e-mail address is Spotswood@comcast.net