A Year In Mill Valley

• Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop – American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth. https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759

• Superb round up on what defunding the police really means – “Police Abolition: The Growing Movement to Defund the Police” https://kottke.org/20/06/police-abolition-defund-the-police

• How can we win? Powerful video explaining why Blacks don’t own anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go

• What Happened to Crime in Camden? Often ranked as one of the deadliest cities in America, Camden, New Jersey, ended 2017 with its lowest homicide rate since the 1980s. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crime-in-camden/549542/

• MINNEAPOLIS CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ANNOUNCE INTENT TO DISBAND THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, INVEST IN PROVEN COMMUNITY-LED PUBLIC SAFETY https://theappeal.org/minneapolis-city-council-members-announce-intent-to-disband-the-police-department-invest-in-proven-community-led-public-safety/

• The Fight To Fix Policing Begins At The City Council
  A District of Columbia election proves candidates who want to defund the police can win city council posts that give them direct power over police funding. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/janeese-lewis-george-districi-of-columbia-police-reform-city-councils_n_5edaab12c5b6dc3de7b95082

• Obama’s Commit To Action: A call for mayors, city councils, and police oversight bodies to address police use of force policies. https://www.obama.org/mayor-pledge/

• Code Switch: How Much Do We Need The Police? https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police

• Freedom to Thrive: Reimagining Safety & Security in Our Communities. The choice to resource punitive systems instead of stabilizing and nourishing ones does notmake communities safer. Instead, study after study shows that a living wage, access to holistic health services and treatment, educational opportunity, and stable housing are far more successful in reducing crime than police or prisons. https://populardemocracy.org/news/publications/freedom-thrive-reimagining-safety-security-our-communities

• The Price of Defunding the Police: A new report fleshes out the controversial demand to cut police department budgets and reallocate those funds into healthcare, housing, jobs, and schools. Will that make communities of color safer? https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/07/the-price-of-defunding-the-police/533232/

• The Police Are Rioting. We Need to Talk About It.
  It is an attack on civil society and democratic accountability. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/opinion/sunday/police-riots.html

• Emmanuel Acho Twitter: Dear white people, For days you’ve asked me what you can do to help. I’ve finally found an answer. Let your guard down and listen. https://twitter.com/thEMANacho/status/1267609472589090816

• My White Friend Asked Me on Facebook to Explain White Privilege. I Decided to Be Honest

• How to respond to “riots never solve anything!”

• we need more. Song by Taylor Fagins dedicated to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless Black sisters and brothers who have died.)

• When you have legit concerns about police conduct, and the cops threaten to throw you in jail…

• It’s long past time for Drumpf to resign – from the Portland, Maine, Press Herald. Our View: To President Trump: You should resign now. He lacks the character, maturity and judgment to lead the country in a perilous time.

• So much unnecessary heartache caused because Nixon wanted to target blacks and anti-war protesters… Nixon Started the War on Drugs to Target Black People & the Antiwar Left

• Heartbreaking to watch. He’s reaching out with words of love, and they arrest him for no reason at all. Shameful. https://twitter.com/sweeeetdee_/status/1267319103167107072

• If only the Dems had the guts to do these things…”Democrats would have you believe they are victims and have no power in this situation — which is, in a word, horseshit. And not just run-of-the-mill horseshit we’ve all gotten used to — this is especially dangerous horseshit, because we need them to actually use the power they currently have to oppose what’s going on. Right now.” https://sirota.substack.com/p/10-things-dems-could-do-right-now

Zero-based budgeting is the concept that one returns to basics each year(*) in order to justify the budget for a project, department or other entity.

I’d like to see us use this concept for justifying the social services and police and sheriff budgets for Mill Valley and Marin County.

In order to do this we must first define what the goals are of these systems. Then we define the SLIs (Service Level Indicators) and SLOs (Service Level Objectives) against which we plan to measure these systems.

In the case of a police department, one indicator (SLI) would be whether the level of staffing is appropriate to provide the expected delivery of service. Think of a bank, if there are too few tellers there’s a line, and if there are too many, you’re paying for unneeded staff sitting around doing nothing. Same for the police – it may be that Mill Valley needs 22 staffed positions, but it also may be that that’s too high, or too low. We should start by looking at staffing levels historically over the past 50 years, comparing that to the population growth, the budget growth, as well as the number and types of incidents being responded to. Only by looking at real numbers can we make informed decisions about staffing levels.

Another SLI would be how often officers are responding to situations for which they are a) not needed, or b) not trained. For example, if a large percentage of their callouts are responding to homelessness, young people being young people, drug addiction, or other “social ills”, then it may be that we should be funding alternative response methods which are geared towards responding to these types of incidents with a social service rather than law and order mindset.

The same goes for social services. What are their SLOs and SLIs, and are they properly staffed to serve the communities that need their attention?

I am not an expert in policing or social services, so I don’t know what all the SLIs are, and what the SLOs should be set at. But I am very interested in learning more, and hearing from those who are experts in these areas.

And it may be that we have the exact right budget split between policing and social services. But I doubt it. Which is why I think we need an open and honest conversation about where our priorities lie, our needs lie, and whether we are funding all of them appropriately.

(* It doesn’t have to be every year, it could be every two, or five years as agreed upon by the community. The most important thing is that it happen regularly, so that everyone can question why things are the way they are.)

I sent this letter to all of the Mill Valley council members, and all the Marin County Supervisors. I intend to attend meetings of both, and ask them to “perform a fully transparent, open to the public, review of all of policing and social service policies and budgets.” Because if we can’t do it in Marin County, how do expect it to be done anywhere else?

—–

In this article “How Much Do We Need The Police?” they ask and answer some interesting questions around how we have gone from police being here to “Protect and Serve”, to them being asked to solve all of our societal ills — mental health issues, homelessness, drug addiction, and all the other things that we have defunded over the years.

I would like to suggest that both Mill Valley and Marin County take a top down approach to reviewing its social services and police and sheriff departments, and to review the police and sheriff department’s charter, operations and budget.  It may be that we have the right number of officers.  That they are perfectly trained in the latest techniques of de-escalation before force.  That they don’t have any military equipment in their arsenal.  That they investigate, and fire, officers for misconduct.  That misconduct charges are fully searchable and transparent to all citizens, and that they are never deleted or redacted.  And that their contract does not contain egregious clauses and language which makes it impossible to discipline or fire officers.  

It may be that all of those things are perfect and true, but it’s unlikely.  And so I would like to see us perform a fully transparent, open to the public, review of all of these policies.  Because if we can’t do it here, in Mill Valley and Marin County, where we haven’t (yet) had any problems, how can we expect it to happen anywhere else, where tensions are higher?

Please don’t wait until it’s too late.  Please do this now, while you will be sure to get the backing of the citizens of this great city, county and state.

I leave you with two articles that I think you’ll find interesting.

What do protesters want? Here are 10 demands sent to the Dallas Police Department, local leaders

How to Actually Fix America’s Police: Elected officials need to do more than throw good reform dollars at bad agencies

Sincerely,
Frank Leahy, A Dad In Mill Valley

I was sitting in traffic on 101 the other day, thanking my lucky stars that I don’t have to do it very often.  I live in Mill Valley, and work in San Francisco, and I get to ride my bike to work every day, rain or shine.  When it rains (or it’s too cold) I’ll ride to the Sausalito ferry and read a book on the way to the Ferry Building.  When it’s nicer weather I’ll ride all the way in, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge where I make a habit of taking photos and posting them on Instagram.

At one level, thinking about traffic is easy because you know what you want — less of it.  But when you really start thinking about it you realize it’s a much harder problem.  And like an old sweater, when you pull on one idea you realize it’s connected to this other idea, and another, and another.  Until it’s almost too hard to think about.

And so we find ourselves discussing things piecemeal because it’s easier that way.  Housing at the Seminary in Strawberry, and Measure E, and traffic on 101, and school buses in Mill Valley, and the schooling crisis in Marin City, and lack of affordable housing, and jobs in and around San Francisco, and weekend traffic to Stinson Beach, and parking at Muir Woods, and the increased traffic on the Richmond San Rafael Bridge, without realizing that they are all part of a larger conversation called “What is the future of Marin County, and how do we get there with what we want?”

Creating A Framework For Thinking About The Future

In order to discuss the future, you have to know what it’s comprised of.  And to that end I’ve started a list.  Notice I didn’t say defined a list, rather I’ve just started a list.  That’s because I’m looking to start a conversation, to work together with others interested in the same topics, to find the right set of ideas to talk about, a framework if you will, within which to discuss our collective future.

A List Of The Most Important Topics That Impact The Future Of Marin County

You might wonder why I started this article with an anecdote about traffic.  It’s because traffic is a microcosm of where we are right now, of how we got here, and how we’re going to either dig ourselves in deeper, or dig ourselves out of the coming juggernaut called “increasing population” or “everyone loves California and San Francisco and they’re moving here whether we want them to or not”.

In no particular order, I propose the following ideas for inclusion in a list of the most important topics that will impact the future of Marin County.  I look forward to a discussion of  the pros and cons on any of these issues, as well as pointers to other important issues that I may have overlooked.

(See also “What Do You Want Marin To Be When It Grows Up?“)

Traffic

We know what we want, less of it, but we’re not sure how to get there.  In the short term we can fix most of the morning and evening commute problems by expanding the Sir Francis Drake on and off ramps.  But longer term we’re maxed out.  Once the final 3-lane section around Petaluma is completed, there will be no more 101 expansion possible, not unless we eminent domain room for additional lanes, ​resort to a second deck, or unless self-driving cars solve all of our problems, as some people have suggested.

Jobs

In general more jobs is a good thing.  But more jobs brings more people into the area.  Which means more people looking for their slice of the suburban dream.  Which means more traveling (and traffic) to jobs centers such as San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and the next big job center, Oakland.  And because of Prop 13 people are less likely to move from their lower-taxed house and will put up with increased travel distances and times.  Which means we either need to provide new housing in Marin County, or we can continue to expect more through traffic on 101.

Population

Population is a juggernaut we can’t stop, as our existing legal structure does not allow us to tell someone they can’t move to California.  So, while in the very long term (> 100 years) the US may well follow the likes of Japan and the Italy where population is falling, it is unlikely to impact us in California, as the center of the country continues to hollow out.

100 years ago Marin County had a population of about 25,000.  In the intervening years, it has grown from 25,000 to just over 260,000 today.  Over the last 100 years that’s an annual growth rate of 2.37%.  Between 1970, when the population was 206,000 and today, the annual growth rate has been a very low 0.58%, the result in large part of the environmental movement of the 1960’s which stopped the development of Marincello and the suburbanification of West Marin.

Now consider 100 years from now.  If we track against the last 40 years annual growth rate of 0.58%, we will hit a population of 465,000 in 2116.  If instead we track closer to Sonoma County’s last 40 year rate of 1.66%, we will hit 1,350,000.  And if we use the Marin County 100 year annual rate of 2.37% rate we will hit a population of 2,700,000.

You can see where this is going — without thoughtful planning we will live, and may well die, a death of 1000 cuts.

Housing and Land Use Planning

One way to control population in a location such as Marin Country is to control housing, through zoning laws and planning restrictions.  We see this in Bolinas where lack of water is an excuse to deny permits.  Or zoning lands in West Marin as agricultural so they can not be built on.

As laws like the recent SB375 “Transportation planning: travel demand models: sustainable communities strategy: environmental review.” takes hold, we will see more discussion and likely a lot more dissension around how many people Marin County will and must accommodate in the future, and where that will be.

Transportation Infrastructure

There are three primary travel modes in Marin County — cars, buses and ferries.  Single person car is the primary commuter option at 66%, followed by carpool at 11%, bus at 7% and ferry at 2.5%.  The primary focus, via dollars spent, has been on expanding 101 to accommodate more cars.  This will work until population increases, causing a concomitant traffic increase, at which point we will have to do it all over again.  If we can.

Taxes

Proposition 13 has created a two-tier population in California.  There are those who have been here for 20 years or more, and who are paying very low property taxes.  And there is the more recent population of house buyers who are paying a tax rate commensurate with current housing prices.  This has led to decreased population mobility of older populations who can afford to sit on a house worth millions while contributing nothing extra to the local economy.

This has also led to a general lack of funding for local projects, which impacts land use decisions, and requires the use of regressive parcel taxes to raise money for schools and other local entities, such as libraries.

By way of a simple example, I have good friends who live on the Stanford Campus.  They are both doctors (now retired), and are sitting on a virtual goldmine as they own a house that they could sell tomorrow for $5 million dollars, or more.  But because they moved there in 1970, their property is valued at $174,000, and they pay less than $2800/year in taxes.  They have been heavy users of public facilities, with 5 children going through the Palo Alto school system, two of whom went on to graduate school at UC Berkeley and UCLA.  And even now they have grandchildren living with them who are attending Palo Alto schools today.  All in all a pretty sweet deal for $2800/year.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this is fair.  But regardless if it’s fair or not, tax policy will have a huge impact on almost every decision we make regarding Marin County in the future.

Schools

How important are good schools to a community?  And how important are they to property values?  You can see different answers to this question in Southern Marin, where Sausalito and Mill Valley take two different approaches.  Sausalito has never, to my knowledge, funded a parcel tax, whereas Mill Valley has recently passed a renewal of the 2008 Measure A parcel tax which funds 20% of the running expenses of the district.

Because of Prop 13, local districts are reduced to using a regressive parcel tax as their only means of raising money from their communities, because general obligation bonds, which are tied to property values, can only be used for building or renovating facilities, and not for day to day expenses.

The arguments for and against Measure E in Mill Valley, were a microcosm of the arguments for and against school funding in Marin County, and elsewhere.  In Measure E you can also see the changing demographics of older people staying in their Prop 13 protected homes at work.  The previous measure, Measure A, passed in 2008 with a 74% majority.  Measure E just barely squeaked by in 2016 with 66.8%. The question is, what will happen in 2030 when Measure E comes up for renewal and the percentage of older people without children in the district continues to rise?

Affordable Housing and Social Equity

There are two other phrases that one hears when talking about things like housing and taxes and traffic – affordable housing, and social equity.  Both of these raise questions about what is right, what is fair, and whether our primarily capitalist, supply and demand based economy will provide us with the results we desire.  Are there, for example, some overarching goals that we should be considering, and working towards.

Googling for “why do we care about affordable housing in marin county” there were several interesting articles.  Marin County has a program, the Marin IJ has lively discussions, the Interfaith Council has plans, and George Lucas is a hero or a goat, depending on which side of the discussion you’re on.  Affordable housing has close ties to land use planning and transportation infrastructure, as reducing the amount of buildable land in Marin County increases existing housing values and the cost of building on the few remaining parcels, while lack of transportation options means that low-income workers must spend an inordinate percentage of their income on either housing or travel expenses.

Social equity is a relatively new term, which is related to social equality and social justice.  At its most basic, it means “fair access to livelihood, education, and resources; full participation in the political and cultural life of the community; and self-determination in meeting fundamental needs.”

In the abstract it sounds like a good thing, as it’s there to “help agencies make sure that all county residents, especially low-income and disadvantaged communities, receive a fair share of the benefits from transportation investments.”  There are several groups who think that Plan Bay Area could use more social equity goals, as well as more participation by low-income and disadvantaged communities. Whether they are right or not, social equity will likely be a rallying cry for those against the implementation of large portions of Plan Bay Area and SB375.

Continuing the Discussion

This post is, I hope, just the first of a series in which we collectively explore the landscape called “The Future of Marin County”.  In this age of Facebook and Twitter, and blogs like MarinPost.org, I’m looking to do is as a conversation rather than a one-way exposition.

So please, feel free to link this elsewhere.  And I hope you’ll use the comments section to tell us all about your ideas, thoughts and concerns.

I love that people care enough about their (our) community to keep on top of the various governmental organizations that impact us.

In particular, there’s a group calling themselves Sustainable TamAlmonte who are very active, and to whose newsletter I subscribe. This group recently sent out a letter to TAM (Transportation Authority of Marin) with feedback on a bicycle and pedestrian plan for Shoreline Highway in Tam Junction (see the plan here).

I have been thinking a lot about transportation since returning from our trip this summer to Europe, and so I read the group’s feedback with a new eye (I’ll have more to say about that trip in some follow on blog posts). After reading their letter I realized I have a lot to say on the subject — because I use these roads all the time, because I commute by bicycle every day, because I’m a mathematician who understands how queueing theory can help explain where the traffic jams originate, but most of all because I care about this community.

Here’s what I wrote. I’m particularly interested in any feedback on the traffic portion of my letter, especially whether or not it clarified the root cause of the morning and evening traffic jams in Tam Junction.

Hi Sharon,

Couple of comments about your letter to TAM.

In general I agree with you that the traffic situation at Tam Junction is horrible, but I think you’re conflating two issues in your letter – bike safety and traffic congestion – that really should be considered separately.

By way of background, I was the one who, 10 years ago, got Charles McGlashan to re-stripe the Rosemont crossing. I also rode with my boys to Tam Valley Elementary school for many years by way of Morning Sun, down Rosemont, and around the corner at the rug shop to Flamingo, until such time as they were able to do it themselves. And, I now bike to work every day by crossing at Almonte by the Tam High field, over to the bike path and on to San Francisco. In other words I am very familiar with this area as both a commuter and a biker.

Bike lanes:
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It is my opinion that if done properly, bike lanes will not impact existing traffic adversely. I just drove around the junction a couple of different ways, and there are a couple of places that would require buying or eminent domain’ing some land (e.g. in front of the rug shop), require moving existing sidewalks, and maybe even moving or undergrounding some PGE power poles, but this might not be a bad thing if properly thought through.

But let’s take each of your ideas one at a time:

1) Right turn lane at the bottom of Rosemont onto Almonte. This is only possible if one moves a PGE power pole, and buys or eminent domain’s some portion of the corner lot. I like the idea, but I’m guessing this is not going to happen because I don’t think it’s a big enough deal, as it only happens for a short while in the morning, and there are alternatives to that left turn.

2) Bike lane in front of the rug shop. This is a must have. I biked many times (100s?) with my kids around this corner and it is quite dangerous, and there’s no good reason why there isn’t a bike lane there. It will require moving the existing sidewalk though.

3) Left turn onto GIbson instead of a bike lane between the new market and the Arco. This is a complete non-starter. I don’t know if you’re a biker, but Gibson is way too steep for kids (and most adults), and after taking a right turn onto Morning Sun that street is way more dangerous than staying on Shoreline, for both kids and adults. I would argue that the proposed bike lane between the market and the Arco would be a good thing, as long as the existing two eastbound lanes remained in place.

4) Bike lane on Shoreline between the Arco and Walgreens (both sides). I don’t know why you’re against this as there’s plenty of room today to do this on both sides of the road. And because bikes already use these shoulders, all a bike lane would do would be to make it safer for bikers, and for cars. (What would be really amazing would be to get PGE to underground all their poles here at the same time.)

5) Bike lane on the short stretch on Shoreline between Proof Lab, past the light, and on towards Tam High. This too is a must have from a safety perspective. Too many kids use this today to pretend that they’re going to go elsewhere.

6) Bike lane striping. We were just in Denmark this summer and here’s a photo of how they stripe all of their intersections for bike lanes. It would be amazing if we would do something similar with these new bike lanes. Dan, any chance of that?

Bicycle markings in Denmark.

Traffic:
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As I said above I agree that traffic in Tam Junction is bad, and could be, with a little bit of tweaking made much much better.

If one remembers back 5 or so year ago, there used to be a stop sign at Manzanita (am I remembering back far enough?). When that stop sign was there, traffic would back up terribly all the way to Tam High, just like it does today. Then they put in the light at Manzanita, and wow, the morning traffic disappeared. Why? Because, as queueing theory tells you, when the service rate is greater than the arrival rate, there is never a line. Think about what happened with the Manzanita light…first, 90% of the time there is a green light or green arrow towards 101S, which effectively leaches off 50-60% of the traffic, leaving no more than 40% of the traffic going straight at the light. And when the light turns green there’s always enough time to drain all the waiting traffic (except some times on weekends). Voila, no backup in the mornings.

What does that have to do with traffic today? The reason there is traffic today, both in the mornings and the evenings (again the weekends is a different story), is that the lights at TVR effectively reduce the “service rate” (think bank tellers “serving” or “servicing” their customers) to something closer to the stop sign service rate 5 years ago, i.e. before the lights at Manzanita went in. And with that reduced service rate the traffic returned.

Think about it. In the morning, southbound Shoreline backs up because the light at TVR is not open long enough to fill up the queue at the Manzanita light. And in the evening, northbound Shoreline backs up onto 101 for the same reason — the light at TVR isn’t open long enough to allow the traffic exiting 101 to get to the two lanes in front of Walgreens and the Arco and queue up there.

Basic queueing theory tells us that the new light at TVR is why traffic has gotten worse in Tam Junction, and here’s why. Back before there was a light at TVR, people turning onto TVR had to choose between an unknown wait time, or they could continue around the corner and turn at Walgreens or the Arco. This meant there was typically a very short line turning left onto TVR (because people didn’t want to wait up to 5 minutes to turn). But now they have a known wait time at TVR (which is between 1 and 2 minutes), which means that they know how long they have to wait, and so everyone waits and turns left there, and therefore the light is constantly changing every couple of minutes.

What’s the solution? Remove that light so there is no left turn signal onto TVR at any time (you could still turn left, but you’d have to wait for someone to let you in, as before). You could leave the light there to allow people to cross by foot or by bike, but since that happens much less frequently than cars turning left, you’ll have less of a problem. The other thing you’d want to do is to have bikes and walkers wait at least another minute or two longer at high traffic times, so that cars have a better chance to drain past the light southbound in the morning or northbound at night.

So there you have it…queueing theory tells us that if we remove the left turn light at TVR, all will be well in Tam Junction.

Longer term, if one were really looking to fix the traffic problems in this area, we would be bold and introduce round-abouts at Tam Junction, at Flamingo, and at TVR. Check out this video of a roundabout in Holland which is, I think, a good example of what could be done at Tam Junction. And here’s an excellent blog post explaining how to make it happen. Maybe TAM should spend some money bringing an expert from Holland over for a consult?

With warmest regards,
— Frank Leahy
Morning Sun Ave, Mill Valley