Measure A renewal must turn focus to wildfire prevention

In 2012, 74.3% of Marin County voters approved Measure A, often called the parks and open space tax.

The proposition enacted a onequarter cent sales tax to “maintain open space, parks, and farmland … protect streams, baylands, natural areas, and wildlife habitat … manage vegetation to preserve biodiversity and reduce wildfire risk … repair and replace deteriorating park facilities.”

That ballot measure contained something for everyone and thus met the required twothirds voter approval. The park’s tax sunsets next year.

The single largest use of funds generated by Measure A went to farmland protections. The conduit was the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which was permanently locking in agricultural uses mostly in West Marin. While that task isn’t fully complete, sufficient progress was made so that the next version of Measure A needs a new top priority.

The race is on to craft a successor measure. Marin’s Board of Supervisors will shortly decide what will be included and set priorities among competing tasks.

Marin Parks conducted an online survey to learn the public’s priorities. Fully 78% replied that the No. 1 goal they’d prefer to see in any new parks and open space tax is wildfire prevention. Our elected leaders need to act accordingly. A new Measure A should make wildfire preparedness its top goal.

Marin’s open spaces are overgrown and filled with dead vegetation. We risk a fire storm similar to the one that devastated Santa Rosa.

There is a tendency to “Christmas tree” tax measures whether in Washington, D.C. or locally to give every interest group a piece of the action. A better approach is to make one aspect of new tax measures transformative. That strategy demonstrates that government, at least in Marin, can deliver tangible results.

Making wildland fire prevention the top priority with 35% of tax proceeds would be transformative. Set an exact target of acreage to be cleared of flammable brush before balloting to enable taxpayers to ultimately learn if the levy was prudently utilized.

Marin’s Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers takes the right tack when saying it will “oppose any renewal measure ballot language that does not clearly designate a large dollar allocation — indeed the largest percentage — specifically to wildfire fuel load reduction. This must not to be commingled with any other spending category and must not be conflated with biodiversity and native species restoration programs, which should have separate allocations.”

If county supervisors are to achieve the ever-more difficult goal of a ballot box supermajority, they’ll listen to their own taxpayer survey by making wildland fuel load reduction job No. 1.

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California’s Citizens Redistricting s Commission is about to finish its once every 10 years redrawing of state and federal legislative boundaries to reflect the last census. Commissioners just released a final draft, the second to last step in the process.

The new maps tweak the drafts but the coast from the Golden Gate to the Oregon border is now retained as a community of interest. Despite some very odd configurations in the commission’s preliminary maps, it’s likely the North Bay-North Coast ultimately remains in one congressional district.

The biggest change in the final draft is that rural, economically struggling and politically conservative Del Norte and Trinity counties are returned to what’s now Huffman’s district. It’s important not just to North Coast locals but to the environmental community.

Huffman has championed efforts to save and restore the pristine Klamath and Trinity rivers. The conservationists fear that if the two counties are placed in the northern Sacramento Valley district represented by Butte County Republican Doug LaMalfa, their efforts will be stymied. They consider LaMalfa an anti-environmentalist who looks at the rivers not as treasures but as resources to be tamed for profit and jobs.