School board, city to discuss parcel’s future

The Sausalito City Council and the Sausalito Marin City School District will hold a joint session next month to review plans for developing a 13-acre parcel owned by the district.

City Council members reacted in favor of the idea after an invitation at their March 7 meeting from Itoco Garcia, the district superintendent, and Bonnie Hough, the president of its board.

A date has not yet been set, but is expected in April.

“This has never happened before in the history of Sausalito and the school district. I think this is a watershed moment,” said Garcia, referring to decades of controversy and vitriol between the two parties that climaxed in a historic state desegregation order in 2019 and the formation of a unified school, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, in 2021.

There are differences of opinion over plans for a new school on the parcel; over a separate workforce housing project on the site; and about an underground creek at the property. The joint study session aims to help to bring all parties together.

The district has a three-year deadline to spend the $33 million in bond proceeds for the new school that come from its bond sale earlier this year. The money is the amount allocated from Measure P, a $41.6 million bond measure approved by district voters in 2020.

The district, which had initially planned to modernize the school, was told by the state that it would have to build a new school because the modernization costs were too high. That substantially increased the construction costs, Garcia said.

“The reality is that our current elementary school is in terrible shape,” he said.

Contractors JK Architects and Greystone West have told the district that construction material costs are rising rapidly because of inflation and could escalate by up to $7 million or more if the project were delayed by one year.

Steve Moore, director of Friends of Willow Creek, a Sausalito nonprofit, said he thought the $7 million in materials cost inflation might be overblown.

“By rushing this plan through without looking at the earth-moving costs, they are at risk of looking at more unexpected costs — such as finding buried artifacts,” he said.

The district’s schematic design plan for the new school “doesn’t show any grading, or the retaining walls that would be build behind the school,” he said.

Moore also objects to the district’s plan to move Willow Creek, which runs underground through the center of the property, to the perimeter of the campus. He wants to leave the creek where it is