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From: Elizabeth Weitz
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2026 9:15 AM
To: Distrib- City Clerk <[email protected]>; Eli Hill <[email protected]>; Maribeth Bushey <[email protected]>; Maika Llorens Gulati <[email protected]>; Rachel Kertz <[email protected]>; Mayor Kate <[email protected]> Cc:
Subject: End Camping on Anderson Drive
Dear Members of the San Rafael City Council,
My name is Elizabeth Weitz, and I am writing to express my deep concern regarding the encampment on Anderson Drive and the serious public safety issues it continues to generate.
My family has been proud Gerstle Park residents for three years, having relocated from Novato. We genuinely love this neighborhood — the families are welcoming, the streets are well-kept, and the community has so much to offer. That is precisely why the conditions on Anderson Drive are so troubling. This encampment represents a growing threat to everything that makes San Rafael a desirable and livable city.
The incidents we have witnessed and learned of are alarming. In March alone, our community experienced a homicide and a violent altercation involving a machete — both occurring on Anderson Drive, in close proximity to a middle school, neighborhood parks, and residential streets where families live and children play. Beyond these specific incidents, I personally have observed animal abuse, open drug use and drug transactions, waste being dumped directly into the creek, and other deeply disturbing behavior on a regular basis. On more than one occasion, my children have been in the car with me when I have driven past.
This is not the San Rafael we chose to call home, and it is not the city we want our children to grow up in. I respectfully but urgently implore the Council to take decisive action to close this encampment permanently and restore safety and dignity to this corridor of our city.
Thank you for your time and your service to our community.
Sincerely, Elizabeth Weitz Gerstle Park, San Rafael
From: Kevin Stockmann
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2026 5:16 PM
To: Distrib- City Clerk <[email protected]> Cc: Daniel Cooperman <[email protected]> Subject: Support to Prohibit Camping on Anderson Drive
June 12th
Dear Mayor Colin & City Council,
Thank you for your leadership managing San Rafael’s homelessness.
Please take action this month to end the Anderson Drive campground and let’s begin the process of rehabilitating this area and making it safe again for drivers and bicyclists.
With the debris and craziness on both sides of Anderson, we have felt unsafe commuting on bicycle and, at times, unsafe driving this route for fear of striking persons wandering into the street.
Garbage continues to spill into the street and San Rafael creek. Street trees have been killed.
Please adopt the resolution prohibiting new campers now and remove all campsites when the Merrydale property opens.
As campsites are vacated, please install large boulders and new large street trees.
Please consider large canopy-forming street trees to replace the red maples that have been destroyed – Cork Oak, Red Maple, and the reliable and hardy London Plane Trees.
Larger trees clean more air, help cool the area, help birds and are attractive to passersby.
Also, thank you to Daniel and the team at Community Services Department.
Sincerely,
Kevin Stockmann
San Rafael !
-----Original Message-----
From: keith weitz
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2026 9:24 AM
To: Distrib- City Clerk <[email protected]>; Eli Hill <[email protected]>; Maribeth Bushey <[email protected]>; Maika Llorens Gulati <[email protected]>; Rachel Kertz <[email protected]>; Mayor Kate <[email protected]> Subject: Please end the encampment on Anderson
Please do whatever is possible to end the encampments. These encampments put citizens of San Rafael in danger, they are damaging our environment, their garbage frequently makes its way into our waterways that lead to the Bay. The money they spend on illegal drugs supports crime in San Rafael and the greater Bay Area. We should not be enabling this type of behavior, get them real help and don’t let them live on our streets.
Thank you
Keith Weitz
San Rafael
Sent from my iPhone
From: Mark Allen
Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2026 10:16 PM
To: Distrib- City Clerk <[email protected]>; Mayor Kate <[email protected]>; Maika Llorens Gulati <[email protected]>; Eli Hill <[email protected]>; Maribeth Bushey <[email protected]>; Rachel Kertz <[email protected]> Subject: Written Public Comment — Special Meeting Item 1.e; Request for CEQA Review of 350 Merrydale in Light of the City's Inconsistent Environmental Findings Dear City Clerk and Honorable Members of the City Council, I submit this written public comment for inclusion in the administrative record of the Special Meeting of June 15, 2026, in connection with Consent Calendar Item 1.e (Camping Regulations Evaluation and Proposed Changes; Resolution Prohibiting Camping Along Andersen Drive).
At the outset, I wish to be clear: I support the prohibition of camping along Andersen Drive and I do not object to the adoption of the proposed resolution. I have long advocated for addressing the conditions along the Andersen Drive corridor, and I welcome the City taking action to do so. I write solely to identify an inconsistency between the environmental findings the City offers in support of this action and the contrary environmental position the City has taken on the 350 Merrydale Road project, and to ask that the City address that inconsistency through environmental review of the Merrydale project — not to oppose the Andersen Drive prohibition.
The staff report and proposed resolution for Item 1.e find the Andersen Drive camping prohibition exempt from CEQA under Guidelines sections 15307 and 15308, on the express basis that the action is intended to "limit the secondary impacts associated with unhoused persons living in locations [that] could cause damage to environmental resources, and to prohibit discharges of untreated wastewater and other pollutants." The City thus finds, as the predicate for these exemptions, that the presence of an encampment causes — or threatens to cause — discharges of untreated wastewater and other pollutants and damage to natural resources and the environment.
That finding is difficult to reconcile with the position the City has taken for the 350 Merrydale Road project. For 350 Merrydale, the City has relied on the common-sense exemption, CEQA Guidelines section 15061(b)(3), which applies only where it can be seen with certainty that there is no possibility the activity may have a significant effect on the environment. The City is therefore asserting, simultaneously: (1) that establishing and operating an encampment of unhoused persons at 350 Merrydale Road — a site adjacent to a tidally influenced creek that drains to South Fork Las Gallinas Creek and San Pablo Bay — has no possibility of any significant environmental effect; and (2) that the presence of an encampment causes discharges of untreated wastewater and other pollutants and damage to environmental resources sufficient to invoke sections 15307 and 15308.
These two positions are in tension. If the presence of an encampment causes the wastewater discharges and resource impacts the City relies upon for the Item 1.e exemptions, then the City cannot simultaneously conclude, with the certainty section 15061(b)(3) requires, that establishing an encampment at the tidally connected 350 Merrydale site has no possibility of a significant environmental effect. The City's own findings in Item 1.e supply substantial evidence supporting a fair argument that the 350 Merrydale project may have a significant effect on the environment, including on the adjacent creek and its downstream receiving waters.
My request is directed at the 350 Merrydale project, not at the Andersen Drive resolution. Specifically, I request that the City decline to rely on a categorical or common-sense exemption for the 350 Merrydale project and instead conduct environmental review under CEQA — beginning with an initial study that establishes the environmental baseline for the site and analyzes the wastewater-discharge, waterquality, tidal-inundation and sea-level-rise, and special-status-species and habitat impacts that the City's own findings, and the site's proximity to the tidally influenced creek and its downstream receiving waters, place reasonably in question. As I noted in my written comment of June 1, 2026 regarding the Sea Level Rise Feasibility Study, federal mapping shows the project site lies within the present-day tidal inundation envelope of the San Pablo Bay system, which further supports the need for that review and for a properly established environmental baseline.
Reservation. I expressly reserve all rights, claims, and arguments under the California Environmental Quality Act, the Ralph M. Brown Act, the California Public Records Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and applicable California and federal law. These objections are intended to ensure that the administrative record reflects fair notice to the City of the specific CEQA inconsistency identified, in satisfaction of the exhaustion requirement of Public Resources Code section 21177(a), and to preserve these concerns for future administrative and judicial review of the 350 Merrydale project and related approvals. Nothing in this comment is intended to oppose, delay, or preserve any challenge to the Andersen Drive prohibition itself.
I request that this comment be included in full in the administrative record for the June 15, 2026 meeting and incorporated by reference into the administrative records for the 350 Merrydale Road project, the affordable housing Request for Proposals and related entitlements, and any City Manager invocation of Ordinance No. 2057.
Thank you for your attention to these concerns.
Mark Allen