Hike the Waterfront and Downtown
with Thousand Friends
We are starting a new hike series. It will occur on the third Sunday of the month and will be open to anyone, who lives in Martinez and is 16 or over. If you are younger than 16, you are also welcome, but must be accompanied by an adult. Some hikes will be informational, but most will be to enjoy the special open spaces around Martinez. The distances, difficulty and purpose will vary, but will be pre-announced in our monthly eblast. We hope you can join us!!!
HIKE ANNOUNCEMENT
DATE: Sunday, March 19 TIME: 9:00 AM MEETING PLACE: The Parking Lot north of the tracks from the train station. DIRECTIONS TO MEETING PLACE: Proceed north on Ferry St., cross the tracks and turn right on Joe Dimaggio Dr., which turns to the left (north) and becomes North Court St. Park in the first parking lot on your left. We will meet near the restrooms. HIKE DESCRIPTION: This will be a light history walk through the waterfront and downtown Martinez. We will visit and talk about the ferries, trains, and bridge, the swiss chard growing on the waterfront, Granger’s Wharf, where the black-crowned night herons hide, Joe Dimaggio’s Birthplace, the two Cantinas during WWII (one White, one Black) and the women of Martinez sitting for long hours in the Finance Bldg. cupola watching for Japanese planes. HIKE DIFFICULTY: We will walk about 2.5 FLAT miles, about half on pavement. EXPECTED FINISH TIME: 11 AM HIKE LEADER: Kay Cox QUESTIONS?: email coxkay@hotmail.com and make the subject HIKE QUESTIONS
(Left to Right) Vice Mayor Mark Ross, Mayor Brianne Zorn, Chief of Police Andrew White, Councilmember Jay Howard, Councilmember Satinder Malhi. (Councilmember Debbie McKillop attended remotely)
New Faces in Martinez Brianne Zorn
Every election brings a new combination of faces at City Hall. But the 2022 Martinez election resulted in an even more significant change than we have seen in decades: a new mayor and two new councilmembers. In addition to my election, District 1 voters elected Jay Howard and City Council appointed Satinder Malhi to District 3 (to fill my vacancy). Internal promotions have resulted in new City Manager Mike Chandler and new assistant City Manager Lauren Sugayan. Mike and Lauren are a perfect team combining decades of serving the city of Martinez with new energy from experience in other municipalities. Our new Chief of Police, Andrew White, was sworn in last month and is working diligently to continue hiring new, high quality officers to the police department. In the planning and engineering departments, a new City Engineer (Joe Enke) and a new Planning Manager (Michael Cass) were recently brought on board. We are currently in the process of recruiting for a Community and Economic Development Director.
New staff bring both opportunities and challenges. Everyone brings new energy and experience from other agencies. On the other hand, it takes time for new staff to gain enough experience in a city to optimize their efficiency at their position. While I'm looking forward to new staff expanding our capacity to complete City projects, I also want to stay realistic that much of what we are doing now is investing in training, planning, improving our workflows, and developing repeatable and scalable processes.
Despite my generally overly positive (and probably annoying!) outlook, I find I don’t get inspired that often. But the many new faces at City Hall are genuinely inspiring. I’m looking forward to everything we can accomplish for Martinez residents.
There’s a lot of new folks and we’re just getting started. Are you interested in working for the City of Martinez? We're hiring!
Opinion: NewMayor, Council and staff are off to a good start, but face some old problems: housing and the economic future of Martinez
by Harlan Strickland
Saturday’s City Council retreat was auspicious: well publicized; detailed agenda; good discussion. The new City Manager, new Mayor and new City Council weighed in on council dynamics, staffing, and City goals. There were several opportunities for public input. Before last November’s election, the combined time of Councilmembers on the Council was 82 years. Setting aside Mark Ross (26 years on the council), the average time on Council now of the other four members is 2.5 years. A good start. A fresh start.
Challenges
Going forward, what the Council faces is daunting. A common thread running through the issues discussed was money. As the Councilmembers all listed their priorities for the coming year, high on the combined list was “economic viability” for Martinez.
A sampling:
Retiring Measure X (public safety, parks, general fund, …) and Measure D (roads): Can we replace $9M of annual general fund and capital improvement fund revenue, or will they become “forever taxes”?
How do we increase police and general staffing and reduce turnover?
Can we afford serious Marina upgrades, not only to make it usable at low tide, but more attractive to the point of being a money maker, rather than a money sink? What about the Marina debt?
What about downtown parking?
A little history
Within living memory, certainly for longtime residents, Martinez, in addition to being the County seat, was a bustling retail hub of central Contra Costa. But that was before I-680, before Sun Valley, before franchises and chain stores took over retail. Since its completion in 1937, the Caldecott Tunnel has exerted a slow, steady, powerful influence moving the economic center of the County toward the 24/680 junction.
As the world changed, in many ways, Martinez did not. While this contributes to Martinez’ small-town charm, it also means that Martinez hasn’t kept up with other cities in terms of revenue, even as nearby Silicon Valley has become a world class technology and economic powerhouse.
A wrench into the works: the Housing Element
Like roads, water systems, and, in this day and age, marinas and downtowns, housing, for budgetary purposes, is more of an amenity than a money-maker. It’s something we need and have come to expect, but doesn’t provide much revenue for larger undertakings outside day-to-day operations, such as road maintenance, replacing the water system, or rebuilding the Marina. Unless a city has an income tax, its revenue depends on land use. For a built-out city like Martinez that needs more revenue, setting aside as much as possible of its remaining land that has revenue potential is critical for the city’s long term financial health. In a zero-sum contest for land, being a housing YIMBY in many ways is being a jobs and city revenue NIMBY. The ABAG’s Regional Housing Needs Allocations (RHNAs) do not consider cities’ financial health or available land for increasing revenue; developers are concerned with their revenue, not that of cities.
Steps forward – four suggestions
Revisit the City’s vision/mission statement. While we don’t want to ruin what we like about Martinez, and we want to be better human beings, those things do not provide much guidance for planning a future with increased City revenue. Walnut Creek’s General Plan, for both its extensive and detailed vision/mission statement, as well as its extensive public involvement in the General Plan creation process, has much to be recommended, and is well worth studying.
What kind of things can we do? As the Housing Element is put into final form, review the suggestions at the end of our General Plan’s Land Use Element in terms of types of the forward-looking businesses mentioned and the land use requirements for them individually or in symbiotic groupings. Ro Khanna’s article in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs on manufacturing is also worth reading.
Review Supervisor Glover’s Northern Waterfront Economic Development Initiative (NWEDI). Other cities along the river in District 5 have worked to improve the jobs/housing balance and increase their cities’ revenue. Good ideas and concrete actions.
Check out Our Neighborhood Voices, an organization that is working to get an initiative on the ballot to give local jurisdictions back their ability to do their own planning using their own citizen’s input, to provide jobs, city revenue – and housing. The East Bay Times 2-17-2023 has an excellent op-ed by a former mayor of Los Altos.
Best wishes for our new city government!
Harlan Strickland
How Much Will You Spend to Defend Martinez? A monthly trip to Starbucks?
Help Us Raise $5,000!
By Seth Adams, Co-Chair
At our January 9th quarterly meeting, in addition to celebrating Jamie Fox as Citizen of the Year and welcoming new Mayor Brianne Zorn, we mentioned recent accomplishments and organizational plans for 2023. They were developed at our Strategic Planning Retreat including a fundraising drive, search for new volunteers, and other new goals.
With a new mayor and city council we expect to expand our work with the city to expand open space protection and respond to land use projects, including the fast upcoming Housing Element (managing what gets built, good or bad) as well as a new Marina Plan. Also a monthly hike series and a public dedication of the new Alhambra Hills Open Space (formerly known as the “Alhambra Highlands” development project).
We’re making our monthly 3rd Tuesday working meetings open to the public to attract more volunteers. The next one is March 21 at 7:30 pm at Kay Cox house, 623 Lafayette Street. We’ll also begin 3rd Sunday tabling monthly at the Farmer’s Market to increase our reach and soon do a petition to find out how many supporters “Thousand Friends” actually has (we know that thousands of residents open our E-Blasts).
A $5 trip to Starbucks to Defend Martinez?
We also made a $15,000 fundraising goal for 2023. Our Steering Committee has pledged to match public donations totaling up to $5000 (to raise $10,000). In the past month we’ve expanded our number of donors considerably. We’re also planning to do a fundraiser in May or June with an initial goal of another $5000. That’d get us to $15,000.
We’re a small all-volunteer group organized as a PAC (Political Action Committee). We use most of our funds to support good candidates, respond to development threats, and do public education about Martinez issues. We started the year with about $6500 and we’re headed toward council elections in 2024.
We request that you support Thousand Friends of Martinez financially—and maybe on a recurring monthly basis. It just takes a few clicks: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/formtz or use the QR code we’ve provided. Even a $5 monthly recurring donation—the cost of a cup of coffee-- is worthwhile and makes a difference. Even better if you can donate $25 recurring monthly.
Attend the March 21 business meeting if you’d like to get involved.
Help Martinez strive for more transparent government, enlightened land use concepts and to defend parks, creeks, wetlands, open space and historic elements.
