Page 213 – Pacific Sun | Marin County, California

Marinship Group Opposes Gentrification of Sausalito’s Working Waterfront

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Mar 30, 2021

Marinship Group Opposes Gentrification of Sausalito’s Working Waterfront

With America’s working waterfronts under siege by developers building luxury condos, can Marinship, Sausalito’s working waterfront, survive?

If some members of the Sausalito City Council have their way, it won’t. They’re considering changing the zoning of the waterfront property, a mile-long stretch of land at the northern end of Sausalito, to allow for future housing development.

Sausalito city councilmembers Susan Cleveland-Knowles, Melissa Blaustein and Ian Sobieski want to build affordable housing in Marinship, according to their comments at a city council meeting in February. Though Mayor Jill Hoffman and Vice Mayor Janelle Kellman agree the city needs affordable housing, especially with the deadline for state-mandated affordable housing looming, they’re not in lockstep with plans to build it in the city’s working waterfront.

While supporters say the plan could bring much-needed affordable units, private developers usually build higher-priced units in the same development in order to make a profit.

“It’s mostly been private developers interested in Marinship, and any private developer is going to make sure it pencils out,” Kellman said. “In order to do that, they have to offset with market-rate housing. I’m not familiar with a private developer that’s able to go 100% affordable housing.”

The Sausalito Working Waterfront Coalition, a nonprofit organization comprised of local business owners, employees, property owners, artists and residents, aims to save Marinship and its hundreds of thriving enterprises by keeping housing out of the working waterfront.

Molly Strassel, owner of Molly’s Marine Service in Naples, Florida, shared her cautionary tale with the Coalition at a Zoom meeting last week. In the early 2000s, swanky condos were built next to her boatyard, which has been there for 24 years.

“Developers see the fantasy,” Strassel said. “Now, the condos complain about the dust and the noise.”

The City of Naples says her marine service is in compliance; however, in 2017, condo owners filed a lawsuit against Strassel’s business, alleging their property values have diminished, because they are next to a working boatyard. The litigation is ongoing.

Much to the chagrin of the Coalition, the Sausalito City Council is talking about getting rid of the Marinship Specific Plan, last revised in 1989, and incorporating it into the Sausalito General Plan. The Coalition wants to continue abiding by the zoning in the Marinship Specific Plan, which permits art, maritime and industrial businesses, while prohibiting residential use and limiting commercial office space.

“By incorporating the Marinship Specific Plan into the General Plan and then doing a zoning ordinance amendment, the door is wide open for other uses to enter the Marinship area,” Kellman said.

Housing doesn’t belong in Marinship, says John DiRe, a retired engineer who is a member of the Coalition and the Sausalito General Plan committee.

“There are other places in Sausalito for affordable housing,” DiRe said. “There’s room for dozens of additional floating homes. City-owned property is also available, and that would make it easier to develop.”

In fact, the city has identified several properties, other than Marinship, where affordable housing could be built: the city-owned Corporate Yard on Nevada Street, the privately-owned Olive/Bridgeway offices and various privately-owned property on the north end of Bridgeway.

In addition to the need to preserve the vital arts, maritime and industrial businesses, there are many reasons the city should keep housing and other uses out of Marinship, the Coalition argues.

The companies in Marinship continued to flourish during the pandemic, saving Sausalito’s tax base. In the first quarter last year, Marinship paid 75% of the city’s total business license tax, 48% of the secured property tax, 76% of the unsecured property tax and 48% of sales tax, according to DiRe.

There are also environmental problems.

“Marinship is in a flood zone and built on landfill,” DiRe said. “Groundwater is coming up. There’s the problem of sea level rise. And there’s already been two sites where toxic contamination has been documented. This all makes it incompatible with housing.”

Many people equate affordable housing with equity, and that’s certainly necessary in Sausalito, which is 87% white. However, placing all the affordable housing in one location is segregation. True diversity is accomplished by integrating our community and having affordable housing located throughout the city, Kellman says.

“If you genuinely believe in diversity, you integrate,” Kellman said. “I want affordable housing and I want to ensure diversity. I’m also not going to relegate our BIPOC population to areas that are known to be contaminated, flooding and/or sinking.”

Many residents aren’t familiar with the importance of protecting Marinship, which started in World War II and built 93 ships for the war effort.

I’ve lived in Sausalito for more than 30 years, but never knew much about Marinship. Sure, I dine at Fish, rent kayaks from Sea Trek and visit the art studios at the ICB Building. Yet, until I went on a tour last week, I never paid much attention to the maritime and light-industrial businesses hidden along the narrow streets of Marinship.

While at the innovative Universal Sonar Mount, I met a robot that helps manufacture their products. Owner Reason Bradley says the company, which has been at Marinship for 15 years, has secured seven patents based on their work there.

They developed the test equipment for the Square credit card reader. In September, they joined forces with the United States Geological Survey to map the floor of Lake Tahoe. And when the pandemic began last year and hospitals didn’t have enough personal protective equipment, Universal Sonar Mount collaborated with several other Marinship companies to produce 15,000 face masks that were donated to local hospitals, the Navajo Nation and other hospitals nationwide.

I watched workers repairing a 200-ton, four-story boat that was hauled out of the water at Bayside Boatworks, which Mike Linder has owned for more than 32 years. He employs 10 full-time and two part-time employees, all of whom kept working throughout the pandemic.

Aquamaison builds floating homes and concrete barges. In business for more than 42 years, the company’s homes have been featured in Architectural Digest. Owner Ian Moody says he doesn’t know of another company in the Bay Area building concrete barges for floating homes.

”Our industrial capabilities and our micro manufacturing are entirely unique in all of Southern Marin and much of the Bay Area,” Kellman said. “We’re the only ones in Southern Marin that have it. It’s part of the culture of Sausalito. This is the fabric of our community. We are a waterfront community.”

North Bay Electronica Artist Casts a Dance Party Spell on Debut Album

Charlie Swanson

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Mar 29, 2021

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North Bay Electronica Artist Casts a Dance Party Spell on Debut Album

Like the Big Bang, the music of North Bay solo artist Krane Alis began with a spark of an idea before expanding into a cosmic tapestry … of electronic pop music, in Alis’ case. This month, Krane Alis, a.k.a. Chelsea Walsh, debuts her darkly danceable sound on the album Shake What Sticks.

The longtime North Bay resident always loved music and played piano when she was younger, but she was in her 20s when she became interested in performing music.

“I just had a bit of an epiphany,” she says.

That spark of inspiration came from a book her friend lent her—The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.

“It’s a book about challenging artists,” she says. “One of the questions was, ‘What’s something you’ve always wanted to do but have not allowed yourself to do out of fear of failure?’ Out of nowhere, ‘being a musician’ came into my head. It surprised me a little, but I decided to go with it.”

Walsh started learning drums, and then began attending production school at Pyramind in San Francisco in order to match her technical and musical skill sets with her natural songwriting skills.

“Initially, when I started all this, my goal was to play one show on the drums,” she says. “But, you can never set too many boundaries on anything, because it usually evolves into something different than what you thought it would; and that’s what happened here.”

For her solo project, Walsh adopted the moniker Krane Alis—with nods to literary characters Ichabod Crane and Alice from “Alice in Wonderland”—to pursue dance music that’s heavy on synths and drums and filled with dark and dreamy lyrical themes.

“I love dancing and dance music, for myself that is one inspiration I draw on,” she says. “I think, too, that I was at this point where I wanted to let go of genres in my own music and see what I could do as far as bringing different elements in.”

Falling in love with the recording process as much as the writing process, Walsh spent countless hours in her bedroom studio perfecting the beats and embellishments on the nine-track album as both songwriter and engineer.

Possessing a dark edge in its synthesizers and programmed rhythms, Shake What Sticks is a rich collection of bedroom-pop and indie-electronica that also tells personal stories and explores significant emotional lyrics among the beats and breakdowns.

For the past year, the creative endeavor of making Shake What Sticks helped Walsh navigate the social isolation of the pandemic. Now, with the album available online, she says she feels a mixed bag of emotions ranging from nervousness to catharsis.

“Ultimately though, I think it’s always a good thing to put your creative self forward and put out what you’ve made, regardless of what anyone else thinks,” she says. “At the end of the day, I do this for myself and that’s what matters most.”

“Shake What Sticks” is available online now. Get links to Krane Alis at linktr.ee/KraneAlis.

Vaccine Appointments May Be Backed Up for Several Weeks

Barbara Feder Ostrov and Ana B. Ibarra, CalMatters

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Mar 29, 2021

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Vaccine Appointments May Be Backed Up for Several Weeks

Californians frustrated by the never-ending hunt for Covid-19 vaccine appointments may have to wait several weeks until appointments are more readily available, Blue Shield’s CEO said in an interview with CalMatters on Friday.

Blue Shield, the insurer tasked to oversee the state’s vaccine distribution, is aware of Californians’ frustrations and health care providers’ complaints, and is working to quickly expand distribution so that everyone who wants a dose can get one, CEO Paul Markovich said.

“Immediately on the first day, there probably won’t be availability for everybody, just because…when you make millions of people eligible overnight, there’s not millions of appointments immediately available at that moment,” Markovich said. “But I would say by the time we get to the end of April, or potentially early May, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.”

Blue Shield says California now has the capacity to administer 4 million vaccines a week. But to meet that capacity, manufacturers have to deliver the vaccine supply they have promised, Markovich said.

The scope of California’s vaccination push is massive. To date, 16.4 million vaccine doses have been administered, more than the amounts that some entire countries — Russia and Germany — have administered. About 18% of Californians are fully vaccinated, but far more are needed to achieve the herd immunity that will ease pandemic restrictions.

California is expected to receive 2.5 million vaccines per week in early April and close to 3 million by the second half of the month. That’s a substantial increase from the approximate 1.8 million vaccines a week the state is currently receiving. The boost allows California to expand eligibility to residents who are 50 and older starting Thursday, and then to everyone 16 and older beginning on April 15.

At the same time, two mass vaccination sites in Oakland and Los Angeles run by federal and state agencies are expected to close April 11, California officials announced today. The federal-state pilot project ends then, although the local health agencies may take over the sites.

California’s no-bid, abruptly-announced contract with Blue Shield to oversee vaccine distribution has been controversial. Some counties refused to sign a contract with the insurer, fearing giving authority to a private company. Counties now are allowed to sign modified agreements with the state to join Blue Shield’s network.

In a troubleshooting meeting today for vaccinators, some doctors complained that they had tried to sign up with Blue Shield yet couldn’t get doses for their patients.

But that’s by design, Markovich said. Blue Shield first will bring on board the clinics and doctors who can reach the most people, he said.

“We’re certainly going to get back to everybody who’s interested,” Markovich said. “But some of that delay has been intentional. We didn’t see a lot of point in making them go through the work if they were going to then have to potentially wait three or four or more weeks” for doses.

As of Thursday, only 20 of the 61 county and city health departments had signed onto the new network. Only Kern and Orange counties signed up directly with Blue Shield. Blue Shield’s network so far includes 270 providers with 2,100 sites, including hospitals, pharmacies and community clinics.

Markovich said he expects all counties and more providers to make the switch in the coming days — if not by March 31, the original goal, then soon after that.

Doctors and other providers must sign onto the Blue Shield network to continue getting doses.

For months, the state has been dogged by concerns over equity as Latino and Black Californians hardest hit by the pandemic are being vaccinated at lower rates than white people.

A study published Friday found that the age-based approach in California helped white people more than people of color. That’s because California’s older population is more white.

Vaccinating all Californians 75 and older would have prevented the deaths of two-thirds of white people compared to 42% of Black people’s deaths and 35% of Latinos’ deaths, according to the study.

“An age-based approach in California benefits the state’s older white populations at the expense of younger BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) populations with a higher risk of death from COVID-19,” wrote the researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, University of Minnesota and other institutions.

The study suggests that California’s more recent move to put more focus on disadvantaged neighborhoods will improve this inequity.

California this month began earmarking 40% of its vaccine doses for the state’s lowest income and most diverse communities.

Mill Valley Activists to Hold Vigil in Support of Asian Community

Will Carruthers

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Mar 26, 2021

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Mill Valley Activists to Hold Vigil in Support of Asian Community

Activists with the Mill Valley Force for Racial Equity and Empowerment (MVFREE) will hold a vigil this Sunday in response to recent violence against the Asian American and Pacific Islanders across the country.

The event, titled “A Vigil in Solidarity with the Asian American Pacific Islander Community,” will be held in downtown Mill Valley’s Depot Park between 2 and 3pm on Sunday, March 28.

MVFREE, which was formerly known as the Mill Valley Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Task Force, is encouraging participants to bring fresh flowers and possibly arrive before the start of the event to help construct a community art altar using fresh flowers.

Email ac****@mv****.org for more information about the event.

Landowners Allege SMART Improperly Took Their Land for Biking, Hiking Trail

Joe Dworetzky, Bay City News Service

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Mar 26, 2021

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Landowners Allege SMART Improperly Took Their Land for Biking, Hiking Trail

In a federal lawsuit filed last week in San Francisco, dozens of landowners from Sonoma and Marin counties accused Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit of a land grab.

At issue is the “multi-use pathway” that SMART is building on a 43-mile stretch between Airport Boulevard in Sonoma County and San Rafael in Marin County. According to a progress report on its website, SMART has completed 24 miles of pathway and another 8.8 miles are “fully funded and planned for construction.”

SMART was created in 2002 to develop and operate a commuter rail line parallel to U.S. Highway 101 in Sonoma and Marin counties. Train service began in 2017 and SMART controls the railroad right-of-way that runs through private lands adjacent to the railroad tracks.

The plaintiffs in the suit filed March 15 allege that SMART’s rights under the right-of-way are derivative of the rights obtained by predecessor railroads through condemnations going back into the late 1800s. According to the complaint, those railroads only obtained authority to use the land in the right-of-way for “railroad purposes.”

The pathway is being used for hiking and biking, not rail purposes, the plaintiffs contend, and therefore amounts to an unauthorized “taking” of their property for which they are entitled to compensation.

According to the complaint, “SMART has improperly and illegally invaded, taken, and burdened Plaintiffs’ fee ownership in their land.”

The plaintiffs are represented by Sacramento attorney Stuart Talley, and a Kansas City, Missouri law firm, Stewart, Wald & McCulley LLC, that has developed a specialty legal practice of bringing such claims against trail projects on railroad rights-of-way throughout the country.

According to its website, the law firm is handling roughly 50 “Rails-to-Trails” cases. It touts its expertise in the area stating, “there are very few law firms who have the ‘niche’ of successfully representing property owners in Trails Act cases and no lawyers have been as successful.”

Rails-to-trails refers generally to building trails for public use on the beds of train tracks no longer being used for rail service or on adjoining property included in a railroad’s right of way.

A section of the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit’s multi-use pathway in San Rafael, Calif. on March, 25, 2021. Photo: Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News

A section of a federal statute, the National Trails System Act, creates a “railbanking” process that allows un-utilized rail lines that would otherwise be abandoned to be preserved and used for trails until such time in the future as the railroad seeks to use the lines again for service.

Andrea Ferster is general counsel of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a non-profit organization that defines its mission as building “a nation connected by trails.” Ferster says that the federal railbanking process is based on the supremacy of federal law over state law so that when an agency proceeds with railbanking under the Trails Act, otherwise applicable state law is “pre-empted” by the federal process.

SMART has not, to date, pursued railbanking.

In the view of attorney Thomas Stewart from the SWM firm representing the plaintiffs, SMART has not been smart in its approach.

According to Stewart, SMART should have pursued converting its easement to one for hiking and biking under the railbanking provisions of the Trails Act. Following that process would mean that the United States—not SMART—would be responsible for compensation due to landowners through a process at the U.S. Court of Claims.

Stewart predicts that SMART will ultimately decide to follow that process.

Thomas Lyons, general counsel for SMART, agrees that SMART could possibly pursue such an approach under federal law but he does not think that it is necessary.

Lyons says the multi-use pathway is a “railway purpose” and is therefore permitted in the right-of-way under California law.

Lyons points to the California statute that created SMART and notes that it contemplated that SMART would have passenger service “along with ancillary pathways connecting our stations.”

Those pathways are important, among other things, to allow access to SMART stations for disabled riders, he says.

More generally, Lyons notes that the multi-use pathway is a part of SMART’s overall rail strategy of creating a green alternative to car commuting. SMART’s website says that its “investment in bicycle and pedestrian facilities connects people to other pathways and to train stations, providing opportunities for multi-modal commuting and recreation.”

To that end, each two-car SMART train has space for up to 24 bikes and SMART stations have bike storage.

SMART envisions the pathway as a way that commuters can access the train without driving to a station, and then, with their bikes on the train, they can pedal from their stop to work or home.

Under this view, “railroad purposes” includes making pathways for bikers to reach trains, just as in times past, railroads made space for train riders arriving by horseback, carriage, automobile or bus.

Lyons acknowledges that every easement granted is different and the agency is “in the process of evaluating the claims and determining what our interests were granted back in the 1800s.”

According to Stewart, what SMART is really trying to do is change the easement into one for biking and hiking. He says that if the federal law approach is not used, SMART will have an uphill battle because “under almost all state laws, when you change the scope of an easement to a different purpose or use, it extinguishes the original easement … California is no different.”

Stewart says SMART is “trying to have their cake and eat it too. They’re trying to change the use and change the scope without utilizing the regulatory process correctly.”

Stewart says he doesn’t know why SMART hasn’t pursued the federal approach.

He predicts that “if they don’t do that, then they’re going to get hit with one hell of a big price tag. And I think that would be a monumental error.”

State to Make Covid-19 Vaccine Available to all Residents 16 and Older Beginning April 15

Eli Walsh, Bay City News

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Mar 25, 2021

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State to Make Covid-19 Vaccine Available to all Residents 16 and Older Beginning April 15

California will open Covid-19 vaccine access to all residents age 16 and up starting on April 15 based on expected increases in the supply of vaccine doses, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday.

Vaccine doses will first become available statewide to residents age 50 and over on April 1, with eligibility opening for all residents 16 and up two weeks later.

According to Newsom’s office, the state expects to receive 2.5 million first and second vaccine doses per week in the first half of April. That will increase to 3 million doses per week in the second half of the month.

Newsom credited President Joe Biden’s administration for the exponential rise in vaccine supply that has already enabled some states like Texas and Arizona to open vaccine access to all adults.

“With vaccine supply increasing and by expanding eligibility to more Californians, the light at the end of the tunnel continues to get brighter,” Newsom said in a statement. “We remain focused on equity as we extend vaccine eligibility to those older than 50 starting April 1, and those older than 16 starting April 15.”

Newsom and state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly cautioned that it will still take several months to vaccinate all residents to want to receive a dose.

The state will also continue to reserve 40% of the weekly vaccine shipments sent to local health departments and health care providers for the ZIP codes that have been hardest-hit by the pandemic.

“It will take time to vaccinate all eligible Californians. During this time, we must not let our guard down,” Ghaly said. “It is important that we remain vigilant, continue to wear masks and follow public health guidance.”

California residents can contact their local health department for information on how to sign up for a Covid-19 vaccine when they become eligible.

Residents can also use the state’s My Turn vaccine notification and scheduling tool to sign up for a vaccination appointment when they are eligible.

Covid Assistance Available to Marin County Renters, Landlords

bcnnewsservice

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Mar 25, 2021

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Covid Assistance Available to Marin County Renters, Landlords

Renters in Marin County who have experienced hardship due to the Covid-19 pandemic can apply online for assistance from a $16 million fund provided by recent federal legislation.

The amount was in addition to nearly $6 million in local funding already allocated, Marin County officials said Wednesday.

The county’s safety-net rental assistance program started in March 2020 when the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved a local relief fund partnership with the Marin Community Foundation to support the most financially needy locals.

Eligibility for the federal funds have income limits, according to details provided by the county.

A household of three with an income at or below $125,000 a year, for example, is eligible if they are qualified for unemployment benefits, experienced a reduction in income, incurred significant Covid-related costs, are at risk of homelessness or endured other financial hardship due to the coronavirus. Priority is given to households that are considered extremely low income, which in Marin would be a family of three with an income of no more than $43,550.

The online application is available at www.marincounty.org/rentalassistance. Anyone with questions about the program can also call program staff at (415) 473-2223.

Local landlords have a choice to accept 80% of unpaid rent owed between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, in exchange for forgiving the remaining 20%.

If a landlord chooses not to accept the offer, tenants may still apply for relief valued at 25% of unpaid back rent owed for the covered period.

Marin County Moves Into Orange Tier

Bay City News Service

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Mar 24, 2021

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San Francisco, Santa Clara and Marin counties moved into the state’s orange tier of Covid-19 restrictions Tuesday, allowing them to expand indoor capacities for some businesses and reopen bars outdoors.

The three counties join San Mateo County as the only Bay Area counties to proceed into the orange tier since the state’s stay-at-home order was lifted in January.

The tier change from red to orange will allow each county to increase indoor capacity from 25% to 50% for sectors like places of worship, movie theaters and restaurants while gyms and fitness centers will be allowed to raise capacity from 10% to 25%.

Orange is the most restrictive tier in which bars can operate under any circumstance. A move to the yellow tier allows a county to resume indoor operations at bars at 25 percent capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer, according to the California Department of Public Health.

In addition, business sectors like family entertainment centers, cardrooms, offices and wineries will be allowed to resume indoor operations after being limited to opening outdoors or being closed altogether in the red and purple tiers.

On April 1, counties in the orange tier can allow 33% capacity crowds at outdoor professional sporting events and 25% capacity or 500 people, whichever is fewer, at amusement parks.

Guests at outdoor arenas must be state residents while amusement park guests must live in the same county as the venue.

Details on which businesses can operate in the orange tier and at what capacity can be found at covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy.

SPAWN Spans San Geronimo Creek

Features

Daedalus Howell

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Mar 24, 2021

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If there was ever an outdoor activity engineered to garner side-eye from environmentalists and underscore the optics of class warfare, it’s golf.

Sure, it has its defenders—the former president is the perfect poster boy—but I submit that this is, in part, why Marin County voters opposed a ballot measure this time last year that would have prevented the former San Geronimo Golf Course from becoming a public park. And, of course, there were the fish.

As a sort of belated victory lap, last week saw the opening to the public of a new 100-foot pedestrian bridge installed by Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN). The bridge connects the community with trails on the former golf course and also sits directly over San Geronimo Creek, one of the most important remaining watersheds for endangered coho salmon.

Literally “a bridge over troubled salmon,” the walkway replaces a 100 year-old dam so that the endangered coho and similarly threatened steelhead trout can freely migrate.

Moreover, the bridge allows visitors to enjoy vista views and walk a giant loop around the 157-acre property, without the threat of sustaining a golf-related injury. Assessing data from a study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine, GolfSupport.com found “the risk of injury among amateur golfers has an incidence between 15.8% to 40.9% on an annual basis.”

Why intrude a “sports” injury statistic into a feel-good story about restoring a fish habitat? To make nakedly apparent the dangers of mistreating our local watersheds—by building golf courses on them!—and to spotlight the efforts of organizations like Olema-based Turtle Island Restoration Network (progenitors of SPAWN), that stepped up to reverse the tide.

Any freshman communications major can tell you that data has more relevance when personalized. There are probably some readers for whom endangered salmon are a non-starter, but I think most would prefer not getting a golf ball upside the head. A specious argument but a species saved.

The nearly $2 million dollar project was funded by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife and SPAWN members.

“The area around the bridge remains an active irrigated restoration and revegetation site, so we ask visitors to remain behind the orange fencing and keep their dogs on leash so our native plants can flourish and the riparian habitat can develop,” reminds Preston Brown, SPAWN’s director of watershed conservation and project manager.

Audrey Fusco, SPAWN’s restoration ecologist and nursery manager added, “More than 65 native species are being planted, ranging from beautiful small sedges like roundfruit sedge to large redwood trees.”

All of the incoming flora was propagated from seeds and cuttings collected by staff and SPAWN volunteers in the Lagunitas Creek Watershed and nurtured at SPAWN’s native plant nursery.

“This is an exciting day for the thousands of community members already enjoying this public space, thanks to the efforts of The Trust for Public Land,” said Todd Steiner, project supervisor and executive director of SPAWN. “We look forward to continuing to make this land a model of shared flourishing where humans and endangered species can coexist in harmony.”For more information, visit www.seaturtles.org/salmon.

Marin County Policing Data Shows Racial Disparity in Stops, Arrests

Nikki Silverstein

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Mar 24, 2021

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Marin County Policing Data Shows Racial Disparity in Stops, Arrests

A Black person in Marin City is 50% more likely than a white person to be stopped for a traffic violation by the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, according to four months of data recently released online by the agency.

The Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA), created by California Assembly Bill 953, requires law enforcement agencies to collect and report 16 different data elements about every stop, including the perceived race or ethnicity of the person stopped. The purpose of RIPA is to eliminate racial and identity profiling in law enforcement.

Although the state has required the eight largest law enforcement agencies to report the data since 2018, the law doesn’t go into effect until 2023 for agencies the size of the Marin County Sheriff’s Office.

Still, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office chose to begin posting partial RIPA data online on Sept. 30, more than two years ahead of schedule.

“We thought it was important,” Marin County Undersheriff Jamie Scardina said. “Quite frankly, it was an opportunity for us to be transparent with the community. They were asking for this information and we knew we were going to have to provide it in two years, so we decided, well, let’s do this now.”

The Sheriff’s Office currently reports about five of the 16 data elements which will eventually be required, including race statistics. The information is updated daily.

Marin County activist and retired business executive Frank Shinneman crunched the numbers for the first 128 days of the Marin County Sheriff’s RIPA data, from Sept. 30, 2020 through Feb. 5, 2021. He focused his analyses on Marin City and San Rafael using the reason for the stop and the result of the stop. The data was then narrowed to consider the rates at which Black and Latinx people are stopped versus white people. The findings show a troublesome trend.

In Marin City, a Black person compared to a white person is:

50% more likely to be stopped for a traffic violation.
Three times more likely be stopped for reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
Five times more likely to be arrested with or without a warrant.
60% more likely to receive a warning.
Three times more likely to be let go without a warning or citation.

The total population of Marin City is 2,862, according to the 2010 United States Census, the latest available census data. The race breakdown is 36% Black, 36% White, 13% Latinx, 10% Asian, 1% Pacific Islander and 1% Native American.

Shinneman has drawn a couple of conclusions from his research and the initial data analysis. The higher stop rates combined with the higher rate of no action may indicate that deputies are more suspicious of Black people than white people. Marin City is also the training ground for newly hired young deputies, which has been criticized by activists for years and may account for racial profiling due to lack of experience.

Scardina believes there is a problem with the RIPA data collection because it does not reflect where the person resides. They could be from another Marin locale or from another county.

“The people that are being pulled over and that are being categorized under RIPA are not necessarily all Marin people,” Scardina said. “In Marin City, between those dates you have, we don’t know if those are actually Marin City residents.”

True. However, we do know based on the data how many Black people are stopped—whether they reside in Marin City or are just visiting. And that data shows they’re stopped and arrested much more frequently than white people.

A similar racial disparity is occurring in San Rafael for stops of the Latinx population by the Marin County Sheriff’s Office. A Latinx person compared to a white person is:

Two times more likely to be stopped for traffic violations.
Two times more likely to receive a warning.
Five times more likely to receive a citation.

“I think this data provides what RIPA intended,” Shinneman said. “More transparency based on race.”

Undersheriff Scardina is not concerned with the trends identified, as he maintains analyzing four-months of data is not a long enough period of time.

“We have not analyzed it,” Scardina said. “We’ve certainly looked at it. But I think it’s still a little too soon. I mean it’s not even six months. I don’t know if we necessarily have a good sense of the data. I don’t know when a good time is. Do we look at this data in a year?”

If four months is not enough, let’s examine the racial disparity for more than three decades of the Marin County Sheriff’s Office arrests referred to prosecution. Activist Eva Chrysanthe collected 31 years of the data through the California Public Records Act.

“I just can’t believe what I’m looking at,” Chrysanthe said in an email. “For arrests referred to prosecution 1990 through 2020, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office on average was hitting Black individuals at over eight times their demographic presence in the county. In the year 2000, it was over 12 times their demographic presence.”

Chrysanthe, who is biracial, grew up in Mill Valley. She now resides in Berkeley but concentrates her activism on Marin County. Although she has been criticized for not releasing the data she collected and for refusing to be interviewed by the media, she did provide the Pacific Sun 31 years of raw data and her analyses for arrests referred to prosecution. In addition, she answered the questions posed to her via email and phone.

Her analyses for the last five years of data shows some improvement since 2000 with the Black population. Yet the numbers still remain extremely high from 2016 through 2020, again demonstrating the racial disparity that exists in Marin County.

“Black arrests referred to prosecution remain over eight times their demographic population, Latino arrests referred to prosecution remain generally above their demographic population and white arrests referred to prosecution remain under their demographic population,” Chrysanthe said in an email.

Without reforms, the data trends ferreted out by Shinneman and Chrysanthe will no doubt continue. Shining a light on the racial inequities may be the first step towards prompting systemic changes.

“As time goes on, we will analyze this [RIPA] data,” Scardina said. “We’ll use the data to identify any disparities that we may have within the Sheriff’s Office. And we’ll use that to evaluate ourselves in the department and look at the reasons and causes for those differences. If they continue, we’ll create policies or practices to eliminate those disparities.”

Given the abundance of data available, perhaps the time for analysis is now.