For many years, and many times, Santa Venetia approached the County for our own Community Plan. We’ve documented attempt as far back as 1986! In 2002, we tried again and a Committee was formed. Santa Venetia neighbors discussed, met, cajoled, and pleaded with the County, but it never panned out… until 2007. As a neighborhood working on the County Wide Plan with the County and meeting with our then Supervisor Susan Adams, we again started discussing this possibility. In 2009 a Committee was set up and the call went out for members of our neighborhood to serve. Members of this Committee held ongoing meetings (including with our Supervisor and County Staff) and got to work reviewing the needs for our community and the possibility of our community getting their first Community Plan. With then-Supervisor Susan Adams contributing a large amount from her Discretionary Fund, the neighborhood pitched in with a raffle, spear-headed by Bonnie Monte, to raise the remaining amount needed to hire Godbe Research to put together a survey for our residents. The survey was done in 2011 and we were told the interestand rate of return was incredibly high – a point of pride.
In early 2013, the County made their decision and announced that Santa Venetia would be one of the two communities in Marin to get a Community Plan and our Committee started working with County Staff.
This long-overdue document will establish what we value about our neighborhood and provides direction on what we want to preserve or improve, and what we would like to change. These guidelines will be invaluable when future issues arise affecting traffic, development, transportation, flooding, and more Our hard-working Committee has changed a few members throughout this time but the early group and the later group, and some that stayed the whole time, put in many hours of work to get this project done for the community, meeting monthly from the beginning through completion.
Thank you to the hard-working Santa Venetians who served on the Community Plan Committee and one time or another: Giselle Block, Jane Brand, Jackie Garcia, Russ Greenfield, Mary Hanley, Tamara Hull, Jonathan Metcalf, Roger Heller, Bonnie Monte, Gary Robards, Oscar Segura, Shelley Sweet, and Mark Wallace.
Thank you to County Staff Christine Gimmler, Jack Liebster, and Lauren Armstrong;to the Planning Commission; and to Supervisor Damon Connolly and Past-Supervisor Susan Adams for their assistance, direction, and guidance.
And thank you to all the Santa Venetians who completed the survey, attended the public meetings, and commented throughout the process – as usual, we showed the County that we are interested and engaged when it comes to our Community.
To read the Final Survey: https://tinyurl.com/crr6yd2f
To read the Santa Venetia Community Plan: https://tinyurl.com/SVCommPlan