From:
Sent: Tuesday, September 8, 2026 3:28 PM
To: Lindsay Lara <[email protected]>; Distrib- City Clerk <[email protected]> Subject: City Council Meeting September 8, 2026 - For The Public Record
FOR THE PUBLIC RECORD
CITY COUNCIL
TO: Mayor Kate Colin and Members of the San Rafael City Council FROM: Ken Dickinson, Resident of District 3
DATE: September 8, 2026
SUBJECT: Written Testimony Regarding Community Engagement Gaps and Developer Selection for the 350 Merrydale Road Project
Good Evening Mayor Colin and Members of the City Council, On Monday, December 15, 2025, during your Closed Session meeting, I stood before this Council and read a formal letter warning against a critical breakdown of public trust regarding the future of the 350 Merrydale Road site. In that letter, I flagged a highly concerning, unannounced shift in the project's official framing: the quiet, behind-closed-doors alteration of the project description from "80 units of muchneeded affordable housing" to a "minimum of 80 units".
I delivered that warning on behalf of four distinct, established local neighborhoods: Rafael Meadows, the Merrydale Communities, Redwood Village, and Pilgrim Park. These are the very neighborhoods that you, Councilmember Bushey, were elected to represent. In that correspondence, we invited you all to meet with our impacted communities before any design concepts or developer parameters were finalized. Our goal was proactive and constructive: we wanted to establish a mechanism where local residents could be involved early and often in shaping a project that will permanently alter our neighborhoods.
We extended that invitation to give this administration a clear opportunity to avoid a repeat of the severe trust breakdown our communities experienced during the previous 350 Merrydale planning process.
To date, our neighborhoods have never received a formal response to our letter.
For you, Councilmember Bushey, this silent treatment is particularly telling. As our district's direct elected representative, you failed to acknowledge your constituents' written communications. Worse, at the August 20th Subcommittee meeting, you actively worked against the expressed interests of your own neighborhood by speaking forcefully in favor of maximizing unit counts on this highly sensitive parcel, declaring that "the numbers matter here... focusing on the number of units is the correct first criterion" .
In doing so, you have chosen to advocate for unstaffed density and Hayward-based developers over the safety, compatibility, and historical design precedents of the district you represent.
Furthermore, the public process surrounding the developer evaluation has been profoundly exclusionary. The City gave the community the bare legal minimum of 72 hours' notice to prepare for the critical August Subcommittee meeting. It is preposterous to expect working residents to read, analyze, and formulate technical responses to dozens of pages of complex, competing developer proposals in three days—especially when the presenting developers were given months of advance notice to prepare.
This was not a secret that needed to be kept. Keeping the community in the dark until the final hour only exposes the City to accusations of "rubber-stamping" massive projects without inviting any meaningful neighborhood participation.
If this Council wishes to restore its integrity and prove it is not merely fast-tracking pre-determined outcomes, you must commit to authentic community collaboration:
• We urge the City Council and planning staff to hold a dedicated, open, and moderated public community session on the 350 Merrydale project before bringing it to a final developer selection vote. • We demand that Councilmembers make a good-faith effort to formally acknowledge and respond to written constituent communications. At the very least, our neighborhoods deserve a basic confirmation that our voices are being heard, rather than dismissed as "noise".
We support stable, operationally viable affordable housing, but we will not accept a process that excludes the very community expected to absorb its impacts. We look forward to your prompt response and to a formal announcement of a community-wide public town hall.
Sincerely,
Ken Dickinson
San Rafael Resident & District 3 Stakeholder
PS: I enclose my original letter of December 15, 2025 to you below for reference.
For The Public Record
Mayor Kate, members of the Council—
Ken Dickinson, Rafael Meadows. I’m here this evening to look ahead regarding 350 Merrydale. I thought it appropriate, given this is a Real Estate Closed Session, to deliver my request to you here.
Tonight, I want to speak specifically about the future of the 350 Merrydale site. While the community has been focused on the interim shelter, the City’s own homeless housing website now describes the long-term plan as a minimum of 80 units of much needed affordable housing. The word minimum was added just a few days ago. That signals a significant and possibly larger entitlement decision than we had anticipated was coming.
Residents of Rafael Meadows, the Merrydale communities, Redwood Village and Pilgrim Park are asking for something simple and constructive: early, direct engagement this time.
Mayor Kate, we would like to invite you—along with any interested councilmembers—to meet with the impacted neighborhoods before concepts are finalized, to share your thinking about what this housing project could look like, how density and scale are being considered, and how the community can be involved early and often in shaping it.
The goal is to give you and the council an opportunity to avoid a repeat of the trust breakdown many residents experienced earlier in this process.
We hope you’ll accept our invitation and reach out to our communities soon to arrange a time and date that works for everyone.
Thank you.
Ken Dickinson
San Rafael Meadows
December 15, 2025