Former Sausalito mayor Carol Singer Peltz dies at 82

A former Sausalito mayor who dedicated her career to conservation and environmental causes has died.

Carol Singer Peltz, a two-term Sausalito councilmember, died Jan. 7 at the Rhoda Goldman Plaza, an assisted living facility in San Francisco, from natural causes. She was 82.

Ms. Peltz moved to Sausalito in 1963 and lived there for most of her adult life, said her son, Max Peltz, 56, of Mill Valley.

“I think she was a fierce advocate for conservation of Sausalito’s historic character, its natural resources along the Richardson Bay and conserving public access to public spaces, including the shoreline in opposition to sometimes fierce development pressures,” he said. “She was in many ways a force of nature but she was also a motherly force for her community and her family.”

Ms. Peltz was a fourth-generation San Franciscan and raised by a single mother. She earned a degree in French from Stanford University and a teaching credential at the University of California at Berkeley.

She taught sixth grade at the John Swett School in San Francisco, and coordinated mentoring and private-school-placement programs for gifted African American students with the NAACP.

She married Dr. Morris Peltz, a psychoanalyst, in 1963. She was the first woman elected to the Sausalito-Marin City Sanitary District board in 1979.

Ms. Peltz served on the City Council from 1980 to 1988. She served twice as mayor.

She launched the city’s first curbside recycling program and championed public art, her husband said. But her true legacy was found in her fight to protect the city’s open space, shoreline and resources.

Leon Huntting, 80 of Sausalito, served alongside Ms. Peltz on the council. He said she gave particular focus to land use while working on the general plan, marinas and traffic initiatives.

“She was just very active about all of these issues and she was taking a leadership position,” he said. “Carol was very insightful, very smart, had a great sense of humor.”

Her children remembered her as funny, charming, vital and stylish.

“She was bold,” said her daughter, Josie Peltz, 53 of San Anselmo. “She was not a shrinking violet in any way. She really lived her life to the fullest. She was a force of nature.”

Josie Peltz said her political career and associations were focused on combating overdevelopment and protecting the environment. In many ways, she was a feminist role model for the region, she said.

“There had been female mayors before her, but she was very outspoken and very iconoclast and embraced that,” Josie Peltz said.

She also had a flamboyant and theatrical side. While on the city’s Waste Management Commission, she donned a druid-esque robe and beard for a character known as the “Wizard of Waste” to promote recycling.

“People have become more and more involved in recycling material from the household that simply went into the garbage that would cost them money on their garbage bill,” Ms. Peltz told the Marin Scope in 1998.

Following her term Ms. Peltz was president of a group known as Sausalito Environmental Action.

She is survived by three children and four grandchildren. The family has planned a private ceremony.

The City Council meeting on Tuesday included a dedication to Ms. Peltz, said Mayor Melissa Blaustein.

“Carol Peltz’s compassion, strength and staunch advocacy were an inspiration to a generation of Sausalitans,” she said. “She was a political pioneer and my colleagues and I stand on her shoulders as we continue the hard work of improving our community.”