County's strategy over tribe's casino is a prudent wager

The only area of Marin where they could possibly build a casino would be in Novato and outlining areas of north Marin, which is served by water from the SCWA. The rest of central and southern Marin has been built out for at least 20 years, and in west Marin there is plenty of room for a casino, but there are no high density housing projects, shopping malls or big box retail stores, never have been any freeways or trains, no highrise hotels, casinos or resorts allowed. Also the ratepayers of Marin Municipal Water District are not going to build a desalinating plant to subsidize more development, and west Marin just simply does not have any water to donate to the development corporations. Sorry Sonoma, thank your elected officials for allowing all the development and all the problems that come with it, like mandatory water rationing and heavy traffic. Crowding so many people close together lowers the quality of life for all residents.

Maybe it was a good "wager," but we didn't elect our representatives to gamble with our money and our future. This "tribe" was created for no reason other than to permit Station Casinos, a huge Las Vegas gambling corporation, to open a huge Nevada style casino resort as close to the SF Bay Metropolitan Area as possible... for profit. Once again, the IJ has completely failed to do its homework on an issue of huge importance not only to Sonoma County, but also to Marin. Don't forget, those thousands of hopeless gamblers are going to be driving right through the middle of Marin to chase their ever-elusive pots of gold.

By the way, I wonder where the Marinites get the idea, so often repeated here, that Sonoma is the home of rampant development. Sonoma has a population density of 291 people per square mile of land. Marin has a population density of 476 people per square mile of land. Sonoma has a lot more "open space" than Marin ever will.

Boy did the IJ get this wrong. First, the threat of a casino in Marin won't come from the Graton tribe - it will be any number of other tribes who, if Graton gets its Rohnert Park casino, will try to jump closer to SF. A "deal" where Graton buys the county nothing, and in fact INCREASES the chance of competition for more casinos in Marin. Plus, this shortsighted MOU makes it appear that the county supports the Rohnert Park casino. Wake up. Just because it's not in Marin doesn't mean it won't impact Marin in a big way. With 5,000 slots, projections show it will add an entire LANE worth of traffic to 101, much of it coming through Marin. And huge new water demands from the same declining groundwater system that Sonoma uses to provide part of Marin's water supply. My failing to see beyond their own noses, Marin supervisors sold out the whole North Bay and simply surrendered in a fight they should have been leading.

Actually, Marin county has half the population of Sonoma county, and twice the amount of public open space per capita as Sonoma county. Sonoma county counts agricultural land as open space, but that is not publicly accessable, it is fenced and gated land, that is where the difference is, and why so many people from Sonoma come to Marin to enjoy our world class parks, like Mt. Tamalpais State Park, Muir Woods National Monument, Pt. Reyes National Seashore, the MMWD watershed, Muir Beach, Samuel P. Taylor State Park, Stinson Beach and the rest of the GGNRA. Sonoma can't hold a candle to Marin's open space, and there is no way that Marin would ever allow the high density development that Sonoma has already, and is continuing every day. There will be no trains or casinos in Marin.

Homey, the location tag this program generates only indicates where the poster's server is located. Trust me, I'm local... very local. It's been a long time since dairy cows chewed their cud in pastures where Mill Valley's Town and Country Village now stands to produce the Marin Dell milk I drank as a kid.

Apparently, to some, "open space" in Marin means "parkland," rather than simply land that is not paved over with development. If so, Marin may indeed have more "open space" parkland per capita than most places, if you don't count the non-resident tourists that swarm over such "open space" and our communities like so many camera-clicking, Winnebago-crawling, candy wrapper-throwing locusts. Keep in mind, as well, that most of Marin's "public open space" is part of the National Park system and belongs to everyone in the nation, not just Marinites. Correspondingly, it is run by the federal government and Marin has little, if anything, to say about its administration. National park land, in essence, doesn't really belong to Marin any more than Washington, D.C., belongs to Virginia or Maryland. Parkland "open space" does not directly generate taxes for local government, either. In fact, it consumes tax money, not only because it does not produce revenue anywhere near its operating costs, but also because it imposes a burden on the local community in terms of infrastructure use and public services that is never reimbursed. Sure, national parks may generate a lot of tourist dollars, but when the impact of tourists on a community is considered in costs across the board and their impact on the overall quality of life, trading undeveloped land for use as parkland to service the tourism industry is a devil's choice. If turning every available acre of undeveloped land into a national park is the only alternative to controlling rampant overdevelopment, you've already lost the battle. What's the difference between compact urban development with smaller neighborhood parks and sprawling suburban development with larger national parks? Not much, really.

Agricultural "open space," on the other hand, generates profits and tax revenue that benefit the entire community without the necessity of paving over the land. It is completely under the control of the local governments and thus, under the control of the people who live upon it. It also produces food, useful and necessary to the local community and, as we are now becoming more aware, essential to a community's self-sustainability.

Marin's national parks are a national treasure and we are blessed to have them in our midst. They are not, however, a factor in any valid measure of the impact of "population density" on a community.

Marin also has a lot of public open space that has been paid for by local residents, and donated to the Marin County Open Space District for all to use, and so it won't fall into the hands of greedy developers. That is why people who don't live in Marin call us names like NIMBY'S, because we buy our back yards so no one can slap up some cheaply built condo boxes and sell them for high dollars. It is our front yards we are concerned about in Marin, we must fight to keep out casinos and trains.

Homey Says wrote:

We need a casino. Marin will suffer from exploding immigrants demanding services. Use San quentin and bus in all the workers from the canal. Then maybe brockbank and miller will have their social justice they seek

you are too droll. maybe the San Quentin prisoners can run the Keno tables, too! then donate their earnings to the SQ construction fund.

Don't count on it!

Don't count on it not having one here. I think it would be wonderful for all!

SD