Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for April 27, 2020

Groups of cyclists are worse than day laborers

I am writing in regard to a recent article in the Marin IJ about day laborers (“Marin day laborers risk violating anti-virus orders,” April 17).

It pointed out that since they were not working on an “essential construction project” or “fire-prevention landscaping” they could be in violation of stay-at-home orders for “just standing there,” according to a county spokesperson.

So, contrast the plight of the most marginal members of our workforce, who literally must work to live, with cyclists, who according to Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, have been allowed to travel by bike, essentially freely, by Bay Area health directors. That decision has led to many nonresident cyclists gathering in West Marin, in around our market and bakery, violating, with the permission of health officials, the basic tenet of epidemiology and the only useful defense in the spread of an illness for which there is no treatment or vaccine.

The health officials need to focus on the illegal and potentially dangerous gatherings of cyclists ignoring social distancing in West Marin communities and not a few laborers trying to survive.

— Dr. Michael Whitt, Inverness

Galilee Harbor wrong to prevent anchor-out access

Do we have the right to stop the public from accessing our shoreline? That’s what happened last week when Galilee Harbor stopped the Richardson Bay anchor-out community from accessing the shore via its dock.

It is as if Sausalito is preventing its neighbors from access to the street that leads to their homes.

As someone who has lived, worked and boated in Sausalito for a very long time, I know the history of Galilee Harbor. Its leadership has been accused of the same behavior repeatedly. But when the owners of those boats were anchor-outs themselves, before they built their seemingly illegal docks, the city was trying to get rid of them.

The community should be bigger than this. How many of us had to learn the hard way that we didn’t know what we had until we lost it?

— Boots Cavanah, Richardson Bay

Mill Valley City Council needs to save the tress

I’m writing in support of the beautiful efforts by Judy Their, Susan Kirsch and Jane Hirshfield, all residents of Mill Valley who have written eloquently on behalf of the lovely trees on the corner of Blithedale and Camino Alto.

On May 4, the City Council is scheduled to hear an appeal to save the four healthy trees at the entrance to our town which are needlessly threatened by a pizza-parlor operator who plans to open there soon. Businesses at that location come and go, but those trees should remain — they belong to all of us. They are healthy, mature trees whose beauty cannot be replaced by young saplings.

Hirshfield had it right when she said, “I am dismayed by the strange phenomenon of late, the official move to remove so many trees from Mill Valley.” She speaks for many of us, especially in this dire time of threats to our environment and our health.

I implore the council members to do the right thing and save the trees.

— Nancy Reese, Mill Valley

Faith has been lost in the SMART board

At the April 15 Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit board meeting, Chair Eric Lucan included problematic remarks while trying to support the staff.

“Say what you want to say about the (SMART) board, but do not go after our staff at any level,” he said. “Questioning our staff’s integrity and making claims of fiscal mismanagement really will not be tolerated.”

Not a single board member suggested those remarks were inappropriate. Not one stood up for the public’s right to question the inner workings of a publicly funded agency and to question the competence of senior staff with a long record of misleading the public and lack of transparency regarding SMART’s poor operating performance.

Why would the board not want to hear from Marin and Sonoma residents regarding mismanagement of the agency’s finances?

For more than two years, SMART has been operating in the red, consuming financial reserves in order to operate more trains than it could afford to tweak its ridership before an election. No responsible manager should have suggested such a reckless policy and no board member with fiduciary responsibilities to taxpayers should have approved it.

It’s no wonder the SMART board has lost credibility with the voters.

— Mike Arnold, Novato