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By 02/03/2021
Everyone can agree with the frightening opening to the Inverness Foundation’s solicitation for the adoption of another Inverness Public Utility District tax: “We don’t want Inverness to be like Paradise…ravaged by…fire.”
Alarmed Inverness residents are then presented with a property tax proposition authored by Seahaven residents rather than our utility district. This tax, they claim, will provide funds to alleviate the wildfire threat and Inverness’s water problems essentially leaks and inadequate storage capacity. Yet combining wildfire danger with IPUD’s water issues creates a scattershot approach to two separate and complex situations. And a cursory analysis of the proposal’s enormous ambitions reveals that its expenditures will clearly exceed its generated income.
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By 01/20/2021
The smoke from the Woodward Fire was still lingering in the air when a group of Inverness residents decided that the village’s immediate needs related to wildfire prevention and water storage would require a new funding source. In a survey launched this month, residents are weighing in on whether they would support a new parcel tax that the Inverness Association hopes to sponsor.
“The biggest driver of this is climate change,” said Jerry Meral, who sits on the association’s board and had the idea for the tax. “Look, we have had almost no rain halfway through January, and that’s true throughout the whole Pacific Southwest, it’s not just Inverness. And so I think we need to be ready to be ready with our water supply and to fight the fires we all know are getting more and more frequent. Now whether the Inverness voters share that view, I guess we will find out.”
12/23/2020
West Marin is sheltered in many ways, but it was not immune to the upheavals of 2020: the social and economic impacts of the pandemic, the consequences of climate change, and the political turmoil that swept the nation.
Covid-19 cases stayed relatively low on the coast thanks to regional public health orders, but the most vulnerable were disproportionately affected, education was impeded and local businesses were injured. Coastal residents grappled with the increasing severity of California’s climate, living on a razor’s edge as the Woodward Fire burned through the Point Reyes National Seashore. Meanwhile, in a county reported to have the greatest racial disparities in the state, locals joined the movement against systemic racism and police brutality, pushing for reform.