Gregory Andrew
June 1, 2026
Mayor Kate Colin and San Rafael City Councilmember, and Ms. Lindsay Lara, City Clerk
City of San Rafael
1400 Fifth Avenue
San Rafael, CA 94901
Via email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Re: Comment on Item 4c of the 6/1/2026 City Council Agenda; re: Strategic Plan Dear Mayor Colin, Councilmembers Bushey, Hill, Llorens Gulati, and Kertz, and Ms. Lara I am writing to provide a public comment on the 3-year Strategic Plan Update and Performance Metrics for Priority D – Housing and Homelessness. It is certainly sound policy for the City to establish a strategic plan and to set goals, milestones, and performance metrics. However, the City’s performance for public engagement with the Interim Shelter and Affordable Housing projects at 350 Merrydale has been tainted by the project being shrouded in secrecy and this now appears to have been an intentional strategy.
Through a Public Records Act request, an August 2025 record of a Milestone Tracker for the 2025/2026 Workplan (attached) reveals that the City had an intentional and planned strategy to not engage the public in the Interim Shelter project until after the project had been set up. We now know that this workplan was for 350 Merrydale Road. This Workplan shows that the first priorities were to identify the property, develop an agreement with Marin County, finalize a Purchase & Sale Agreement for the property, and secure funding for the Interim Shelter project before commencing with any public outreach. While the workplan does describe community outreach, that outreach was to begin in March 2026 and only one month before the City would also be working on the site plan and contracting services, in April 2026. This workplan leaves no doubt that the City had planned community engagement only after the site was secured and all aspects of developing an Interim Shelter project had first been settled.
You may want to say that this was a real estate deal that you were entitled to keep secret and that you did so in order to obtain the best price for the property but this argument does not hold up for 350 Merrydale Road. There, you bought property that already had an approved development plan – an approved plan that the property owners had likely spent hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to secure. The price paid by the City very likely included the property owners recouping their investment on top of the fair market value for the property under its current condition.
The Strategic Plan does layout community involvement but at the wrong end of the plan and it purposely left no room for any real or meaningful input from the public on how and where to establish an Interim Shelter Project.
Thank you,
Gregory Andrew
GMA:gma, encl.