From: Scott Loarie
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2024 4:49 PM
To: Mayor Kate <[email protected]>
Subject: Postpone vote on sanctioned encampment plan
Dear Kate Colin,
I live in Gerstle park, which is a diverse, working class community working hard to create a great community for our families.
We work hard to support our public schools by investing in schools like Davidson rather than being a part of the white flight to private schools.
We support environmentally conscious, walkable cities and I have abandoned my car in favor of walking to Safeway and Sprouts for groceries. When we moved to San Rafael, I was thrilled to be able to walk past the last stretch of Salt Marsh on San Rafael Creek in between park side and Sprouts. As a lifelong environmentalist, I was making plans to start a friends group around stewarding and restoring this last precious piece of marsh in San Rafael.
Before COVID, I walked every single day on the bike path between Parkside and Sprouts pushing my daughter in her stroller to get her to fall asleep, going to get groceries, or showing my kids the ducks, egrets, and swallowtails that we could find in the marsh.
Now, that stretch is now completely a hellscape of trash and open air drug use. It breaks my heart to see garbage piling up in that beautiful marsh. Even if I could safely walk down that path, there's too much broken glass to push a stroller.
I can't walk from my house to Safeway, Davidson, Parkside or my office on B Street- the corners of my community - without someone high on drugs accosting my children.
It breaks my heart to think of the divestment that is hitting Davidson as reasonable people can't justify risking sending their kids through the hellscape of sick, unstable, drug addicts who need to be indoors with services.
Our community is not wealthy. There are many families living in close quarters in cramped apartments. But we are working people who together provide a nurturing community for our kids playing together on the sidewalks and green spaces around Parkside. We sit on our stoops and chat to the neighbors kids as they run by chasing the ice cream cart. We have bbqs in the park with Mariachi music. I have no tolerance for wealthy communities complaining of eyesores, but this is not the case in our community. And I can't tell you how hard it is for our middle class community to keep up the delicate veil of providing a nurturing loving community for our children against the backdrop of sick people who need help passed out in their own feces or incoherently accosting us with no clothes on. This is simply not acceptable in a working class community unless your goal is to encourage gated Marin communities who can afford to insulate themselves from this driving SUVs to and from private institutions and country clubs and to herald the complete hollowing out of the middle class in San Rafael.
Governor Newsom has spoken. The time for excuses is over and it's time to start investing in working class families and communities in San Rafael. Give us the cornerstone of our community, our greenspace and the walk home from school to our children back. Remove the dangerous, public health and environmental disgrace that sits between Parkside and Sprouts - support working class communities in San Rafael! Sincerely,
Scott