Dear Friend:

 

As you know I am a twice-elected and currently sitting member of the San Anselmo Town Council. In my public life I have gone to bat in my typical and direct way in order to support individual rights and important public issues including free speech, election integrity and secret voting, protection of nature and living within our means, sustainable energy, neighborly respect, opposition to desalination plants, smart meters, and climate change, balancing homeowner construction rights against maintaining local character, requiring accountability, competence and respect toward citizens of elected public officials and town staff and general fair play among all of us.I have a problem of my own and I need your help.

 

For almost the past two years, both the Staff, and the Town Council has engaged in an increasingly focused campaign aimed at condemning as a public nuisance where for over 20 years I have lived on the first floor of my building – where a baker and his family originally lived, cooked and baked, from near the turn of the century throughout the depression and into the 1940s.In order to meet the Town halfway, I have an application for a use permit, an appeal of a no grandfathering determination and plan application which the Planning Commission will hear on Monday, February 4th at 7:00 p.m. at Town Hall.

 

Please come to the meeting and support me on Monday, February 4th.

As you know, I own, live and practice law out of my building near the Hub that was built in 1905, before San Anselmo incorporated in 1907. For the past 108 years my building has always maintained its precise configuration and footprint as a live/work, mixed use building, and originally as the San Anselmo French Bakery in which the baker’s family of 5 lived and worked from 1911 through the depression into the mid-1940s. Since then in multiple ways the building has been used for live/work, mixed use and affordable housing purposes.

From 1911 through the present, the zoning district where I am located has specifically authorized mixed uses, live/work arrangements and apartment buildings (mine has 3 residential units) provided one obtains – since 1995 – a use permit. The Town does not uniformly enforce the use permit requirement. For example, the 16-unit Section 8 apartment building across the street does not have a use permit. When I have the support of all my neighbors, the question arises what is making the Town focus on me?

My building and its uses have been here for 108 years. It is the type of affordable housing with live/work space near public transportation and downtown that our General Plan supports. Please come to the Planning Commission meeting on Monday, show support and that the community is paying attention to this very important personal issue that has long term policy implications for our Town.

.
Ford Greene