Wednesday, May 01, 2002

 
Plan offered to slow business exodus from Marin

The latest offering from MarinIJ offers an interesting perspective on zoning issues. I find this rather fascinating because I just had a discussion with my wife yesterday on some of these points, and it’s fun to see some of them bearing fruit. So here we go:

A countywide overhaul of zoning laws may be needed to stop more companies from leaving Marin, business leaders told the County Board of Supervisors yesterday.

This is going to be very difficult. They’ve already submitted their General Plan to the State (as required by law). The current zoning has been in place for a long, long time, and so has achieved an almost religious, “but it’s always been this way” status. A major overhaul at this point will effect every resident of the county, and no one is going to like it, because it’s change, and change is bad…except when it’s a good change, which business isn’t.

"What are we going to do about it?" he said. "It's going to take bold action from public officials - some type of mixed-used zoning."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! “bold action” HAHAHAHAHHAH!!!! From “public officials” HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[Supervisor Hal] Brown, however, said that, in general, he thought "business is doing pretty darn good."
"Fair, Isaac just signed a big deal (to buy HNC Software)," Brown said. "They may have shifted their management to Minnesota, but they just bought an $810 million company."

The only way they could make that work in the long term, I’ll wager, is by moving operations. The long term plan has to be getting operations out of California. And therein lies the rub. They’re not mentioning where the 43 companies that left the county moved to. I don’t know either, but I’ll be it’s out of state. Marin is not a very pro-business county to begin with, and California is doing it’s best to make sure that the more successful businesses look to greener pastures as well.

Supervisor Annette Rose, in response to comments about the county's high commercial rental rates, said "there isn't a lot the county government can do" to regulate office space rental costs in Marin.

Actually, there are a few things Ms. Rose, but I doubt you’d consider them. One, just off the top of my head, is granting the difference in rental rates between Marin and the State average as a direct tax incentive. If the annual rental rate is $12000 per year over the State Average, then that company could receive a $12000 credit towards county taxes. Of course, this system is wide open to abuse, but of course it’s abuse in the form of lowering taxes paid to the state, so I’ll leave that as another exercise. The point is, there are ways, and they don’t require county “regulation” per se.

"It's more advocacy than analysis," Schonbrunn told supervisors. "As structured, the report clearly functions as a voice of the business community."

When the mother asked the lifeguard to rescue her son who she felt was drowning in the swimming pool, it was more advocacy than analysis. Again, is it a valid request? Please focus on the merits of the proposal and not on it’s source or agenda as it relates to yours.
Anyway, I’m a big fan of lot’s of mixed use zoning, because it maintains a lot of flexibility. I’d actually prefer to see zoning relating itself more to “look-and-feel” issues than “this business here, that one there” type stuff. I wonder if Virginia Postrel will include something like this in her upcoming book?

UPDATE: Where is Michele Rodriguez, the Principal Planner of Marin in all of this? Why is the Marin Economic Commission making recommendation directly to the Supervisors?

posted by Marin Hot-Tubber 10:39 AM

 
Hey World! I'm an alcoholic visionary!

Which David Bowie are you?

posted by Marin Hot-Tubber 12:17 AM