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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

February 13, 2003

Planner quits months before term expires

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"I was appointed by John Kress," said Garbarino, referring to the former supervisor who did not seek re-election to the District 1 seat. "After the recent election, I offered Susan the opportunity to replace me and then I left the decision up to her."

Garbarino, president of Marin Sanitary Service, was serving her second four-year term.
"She wasn't forced off - believe me," said Rick Fraites, an Adams aide. Adams is on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

Dickenson, a strong supporter of Adams in her upset victory over San Rafael Councilman Paul Cohen, is an environmental activist who has worked as a planner for both the county of Marin and Mill Valley. He is a founding board member and president of Citizen Advocates for Preservation of St. Vincent's/Silveira.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this week to appoint Dickenson to the seven-member Planning Commission. Although commission members are appointed jointly by the board, supervisors generally defer to the supervisor whose district the commissioner will represent, Fraites said.

"I think part of the timing had to do with the Countywide Plan," Dickenson said, regarding Adams' decision to accept Garbarino's offer to resign early. "Susan didn't want to have a change occur in the middle of that."

If the city of San Rafael decides to dump its plan to annex the 836-acre parcel owned by St. Vincent's School for Boys, the future of a proposal to build a 766-unit residential subdivision on the site could rely on zoning contained in that Countywide Plan.

A number of public workshops already have been conducted in conjunction with updating the Countywide Plan.

The Planning Commission will begin working intensively on the update in the coming months, Dickenson said.

After receiving a master's degree in architecture from the University of California at Berkeley in 1973, Dickenson spent nearly 10 years working as a Marin County planner.

He then served as Mill Valley's director of planning from May 1984 until October 1999, when he retired.

"You couldn't ask for a better commissioner; he knows volumes," Fraites said.

Co-recipient of the Marin Conservation League Green Award in 1992, Dickenson serves on the boards of the Marin Conservation League and the Greenbelt Alliance, and has served on the executive committee of the Marin Group Sierra Club.

Garbarino and other Planning Commission members have come under fire in recent months for their perceived willingness to approve monster homes.

"The issue of house size and capability with existing neighborhood scale is a big issue everywhere in the county," Dickenson said. "It is one that the county has to address. It probably should be addressed in the new Countywide Plan."

"Actually," he said, "I think the county has more discretion than it has exercised because of the design review requirement. I think that gives the Planning Commission the ability to address the issue of appropriate house size far more than the commission has exercised."

Passing by the Planning Commission meeting room after his appointment, Dickenson reflected on how many hours he has already spent there.

"I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in that room in hearings over the last 30 years - 10 years at the staff table and much of the time since then in the audience," Dickenson said.

"This will be the first time I'll get to actually sit in one of the commissioner's chairs."

Contact Richard Halstead via e-mail at rhalstead@marinij.com

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