The successful presentation of the initiative seeking to preserve the course to supervisors of Marin County, Calif., left the Board with three options; adopt it, submit it to voters in a statewide election, or order a staff report. The last option was taken, with some supervisors digging in to say they wouldn’t be swayed by “ballot-box zoning.”

 

In the dilemma over the future of the San Geronimo (Calif.) Golf Course, officials in Marin County, Calif. have given themselves 30 days to breathe, reported The Point Reyes Light, a weekly newspaper that covers the county.

On January 29, the county’s registrar of voters presented supervisors with an initiative seeking to preserve the course for golf, which garnered 10,553 signatures, The Light reported.

That gave the Board three options, The Light reported: adopt the initiative, submit it to voters during the next statewide election, or order a staff report be delivered by February 26, after which it would have 10 days to proceed with the initiative’s adoption or inclusion on the ballot.

Supervisors voted to order the report, which they want to focus on fiscal ramifications, maintenance requirements, and the implications of what Supervisor Damon Connolly called “ballot-box zoning,” The Light reported.

Advocates on both sides of the issue engaged in what Supervisor Katie Rice called “a lot of hyperbole” at the January 29 meeting, The Light reported, with some comparing the initiative to a dangerous pathogen and others drawing a parallel between supervisors and the Soviet Union.

Many of those in favor of converting the course to open space took issue with allowing voters across Marin County to have a say in the local matter, The Light reported.

“Turning decision-making for this to people who aren’t part of the community and may have entirely different expectations of community development is not only inconsistent with the original intent of the process, it’s a betrayal of that community’s trust,” said Ann Thomas, a resident of Corte Madera, Calif..

Rico Mastrodonato, the public affairs director for the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit that bought the course for $8.85 million with the understanding that the county would subsequently purchase it and restore the land for preservation as open space, said he was worried the initiative could set a dangerous precedent, The Light reported.

The ballot box, Mastrodonato said, “is not the way to do land-use planning.”

One golf lover at the meeting, The Light reported, said “This whole county is a park, it’s nothing but open space, it’s animals everywhere, everything grows here. You have an abundance of everything except for golf courses.”

That was a sentiment echoed by other golf course advocates in a county where 80 percent of lands are marked as park or are protected, The Light reported. These speakers dismissed the many environmental concerns raised during public comment as “hysteria.”

Still others argued that the golf course acts as a fire break, a valuable resource in wildfire protection that would be lost if it were converted to open space, The Light reported.

Niz Brown, a member of the San Geronimo Advocates who spearheaded both the initiative and a lawsuit against the county, said she would prefer that the advocates, the county and the Trust for Public Land work together rather than go through an election, The Light reported.

“Let’s work out a compromise,” Brown said. “Let’s solve it—let’s be winners for everybody.”

The debate over the course broke out in November 2017, when the county moved to turn the 157-acre property into parkland with help from the land trust, The Light reported. But a lawsuit filed by the Advocates in Marin Superior Court stymied that plan, and a temporary injunction from Judge Paul Haakenson prevented the county from getting the grant funding it needed to purchase the land from the trust.

Last November, Judge Haakenson ruled against the county, saying it had to perform a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) analysis before it could complete a purchase of the property. That decision effectively ended the county’s interest in acquiring the course, The Light  reported, with Max Korten, director of Marin County Parks, describing the CEQA analysis as arduous and possibly fruitless.

Yet Judge Haakenson’s ruling did not secure the continuation of golf on the property, The Light noted, and the trust has not said what it plans to do with the course—only that it does not plan to own it indefinitely.

The county stopped paying Touchstone Golf, the company that had been operating the course (https://clubandresortbusiness.com/san-geronimo-calif-gc-reopen-new-operator/), in December 2018. Later that month, the Trust for Public Land filed a notice of appeal to challenge Judge Haakenson’s decision. Winter King, an attorney for the trust, told The Light that she expected to file an opening brief within the next few months.

The initiative is the Advocates’ attempt to ensure that the property remain a golf course no matter whose hands it passes through, The Light reported. It would change language in the San Geronimo Community Plan—part of the Marin Countywide Plan—to mandate the sport’s retention, and require approval from a majority of countywide voters before a change in the use of the course.

But even if supervisors choose to send the initiative to the ballot, the outcome still may not be the hole-in-one for which the Advocates hope, The Light reported. The next statewide election is slated for March 2020; if the trust chooses to convert the property to another use before that time, the initiative may be irrelevant.

“My understanding of the initiative is it would go into effect immediately after being passed—I don’t believe it would have any retroactive effect,” County Counsel Brian Washington told The Light on January 29.

The board does have the option of calling for a special election before March 2020, The Light reported, but a county press release estimated such an election would cost between $1.3 million and $1.6 million.