Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for March 23, 2023
Tam Valley workers came through during big storms
I want to thank all the workers in Tam Valley, including those from the Tamalpais Community Services District, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the Southern Marin Fire Department and various tree maintenance companies. They are working tirelessly in our area (often in the pouring rain and blowing wind) to make sure our roads are clear and gutters in our streets are draining during these interminable storms.
We are the lucky ones who have weathered it all with relatively little damage.
— Beth Brandes, Mill Valley
Appreciation for care from dedicated hospice nurse
About six years ago, my health deteriorated to the point where I needed supplemental oxygen. I have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. After receiving hospice care for seven months, I would like to share my appreciation.
Nurse Katie Desmond is my primary contact. She visits me once a week on Fridays for 30 minutes. Desmond checks my medications. She is like an angel sent from heaven. I always feel remarkably well after the visit. I’m hanging in OK. A social worker tracks my progress.
Based on my experience, I highly recommend By the Bay Health hospice care. It works for me.
I wish to express my gratitude to Desmond and the program. Thank you for taking care of me.
— Garry Graham, Kentfield
Golden Gate Village is an opportunity for county
Often in life it’s not so much what you do but how you do it that makes all the difference. Members of the Marin Housing Authority Board of Commissioners haven’t yet grasped an opportunity to do more while rehabilitating the public housing units inspired by architect Frank Lloyd Wright at Golden Gate Village in Marin City.
Before I came to California, I was hired as director of development and maintenance for the East St. Louis Housing Authority. I learned how government dollars were used. I was appalled that most federal money to help the poor did not go to the poor. It went to banks, construction companies, social workers, government agency employees (like me) and a raft of all-too-willing consultants. I also saw how regulations and traditions often maintained the very discrimination and inequity they were intended to correct.
To change that, we hired and trained local residents. Many had never held an office job in their life. They adapted quickly, thankful to step beyond their previous “essential services” (a title I find ironic) and housecleaning jobs.
On the construction front, we pushed and pulled locals into well-paying union jobs. That wasn’t easy. Helping a neighborhood handyman step from fixing a stopped-up sink, for example, to installing full house plumbing to code was way more difficult than I had imagined.
We struggled through a terrible thicket of resistance, including the murder of a construction worker, as we forcibly integrated the previously all-White unions. But we hung in, because the goal was clear: Don’t just build housing, use new housing to correct inequalities.
We involved the people most affected, kept the housing money in town, strengthened the local economy (as well as the community) and trained residents for more successful futures. Paying attention to how we built the housing made all the difference. Our county Housing Authority could do the same.
— Barry Phegan, Greenbrae
State Legislature should support solar canopies
Opponents of the proposed utility scale battery storage project near Novato (“Marin battery storage project sparks early opposition,” March 14) should go on the offensive by promoting state Sen. Josh Becker’s legislation to incentivize solar parking lot canopies with integrated stationary storage batteries and vehicle-to-grid chargers on all large parking lots.
The proposal is not a “fix all.” But this work can happen very rapidly everywhere. It uses existing standardized technology, expedited local permitting and an existing workforce.
Becker’s bill would reduce utility and transportation costs for tenants of leased commercial properties. This includes large apartment and condominium developments, neighborhood shopping centers, business parks, public facilities and adjacent lower density neighborhoods.
We should produce and store reliable power right where most energy is consumed. We should shade enormous asphalt “heat islands.” We should build a matrix of reliable networked neighborhood microgrids.
We can accomplish all this without expensive new long distance utility transmission spending. It would provide widely distributed, cheap, reliable neighborhood power production and storage instead of remote, unreliable utility monopoly power.
— Jerry Wagner, Santa Rosa