Meeting with Marin County planners

Yesterday I met with Larry, from LAK Associates, and my agent, Stephen Pringle, at Marin's Civic Center where the Planning Division has its office.

Marin County Civic Center: Frank Lloyd Wright's last and only public commission

We met with a planner to research what record the county had on this parcel and what was required of us to do to receive building permits.

Marin Planning (Room 308)

The county is in the process of digitizing all of their paper records, but chances are that the records you are looking for are spread across multiple departments and they don't seem to cross-colaborate well.  I learned that you should never take "we don't have it" as an answer until you have gone to each department.

We did a cursory search on the parcel to see which ecological restrictions the land might be subject to.  In their database our planner noted that monarch butterflies were not breeding in the area, but spotted owl potentially were.  This she explained was due to the fir trees at one end of the property -- a favorite nesting habitat for the spotted owl.  Fortunately, building outside of the nesting season would mitigate any possible threat to the owls.

We decided to request a copy of all the records the county has for that parcel.  This is called a Planning Information Packet and it costs $128.  We also set up a consultation with one of the senior planners which is more than what we could accomplish over the counter.  The planner would spend time researching your case before the meeting in order to make it more productive.  This special 1-hour consult costs $290.  Also, bring cash or check -- they do not accept credit cards, as I found out and had to run down to the other end of the building to locate an ATM machine.

Our planner explaining the requirements for construction

Next we went down to the Department of Environmental Health (room 236) where a septic system would be approved, and requested all the records they had on file for this property.  They had nothing, and here's another lesson learned.  We asked for the records for the neighbors parcels and for the parcel number from which this one had originally been subdivided in 1998.

BINGO!  We found piles of records now and began to look through them in one of their conference rooms.  We found old biological reports that confirm no likely threat to native species and archeological reports stating that while the Miwok Indians settled on land close by, there had been no discoveries of native artifacts on the land.  Very good news!

Larry and Stephen review county records

While I was there we bumped into District 4 Supervisor, Steve Kinsey.   I guess it's good to know influential people, right?  That's why we are working with Larry and Stephen.