Sometimes you just get lucky. How else can you explain the good fortune I have to write from the Capital of Political Correctness each month? Should you require convincing, look no further than Sausalito’s Alta Mira Recovery Center. A former bed and breakfast, it’s now a rehab center. It also treats eating disorders. Its operators, the Blatt family, are suing the city of Sausalito in federal court, alleging the city is discriminating against its clients.
Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up.
To be more exact, the lawsuit claims the Alta Mira’s clients should be protected by the federal Fair Housing Treatment Act while they’re sobering up at the $45,000-a-month facility. The city has moved to have the suit dismissed.
Last August, the Alta Mira decided to leave the hotel business behind to embark on helping drug addicts and alcoholics turn their lives around. Being sharp business folks (and good with a calculator), the Blatts discovered residential treatment facilities in California with six beds or less don’t require the same permitting process as larger ones. These smaller centers have to be treated by cities as private residences and not drug treatment centers.
So the Alta Mira, which has separate cottages, applied for eight state permits. In October, the city sued, alleging that separating the facilities is simply a way of sidestepping Sausalito’s own conditional use permit process and negating the city’s ability to have any say over the treatment center, which is situated in a residential neighborhood overlooking Richardson Bay.
The Alta Mira’s federal lawsuit asks the court for an injunction to prevent the city from taking any action against the center. It also asks for damages. The city maintains that once the court looks into the operation, it will find only one large center (not several small ones) and, therefore, will require a city conditional use permit.
There’s no doubt the Blatts have designed a business plan that serves their own purposes and leaves the city out of the equation, and that the plan has left the city burned. And while Ray Blatt talks a good game about wanting to build a world class rehab facility because of his own girlfriend’s rehab experience, one quick look at the math—with a six-week stay the norm and monthly charges running from $42,000 to $48,000—the Alta Mira clearly isn’t all about the altruistic pursuit of changing lives.
Likewise, neighbors have screamed long and loud that the patrons aren’t adding to the neighborhood’s quality. They’ve talked of worries about security, traffic and parking. Left largely unsaid, of course, is the fear that a rehab center around the corner will impact resale values of homes with million-dollar views.
I’m no lawyer, and I don’t play one on TV. But I can tell you that writing about this little soap opera, where both sides draw lawyers like they were six shooters in the Old West, is almost enough to make me sign up for rehab. Or at least have a very tall drink.
For whom the road tolls
When it comes to the commute, Marin denizens can’t seem to catch a break. For many years, the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District (GGBHTD) has been in the red because of expenses associated with seismically upgrading the bridge. While the feds have certainly contributed much-needed funding toward making the bridge safer, the district has been operating at a deficit. It’s now considering a toll hike of $1 as early as July. This jump would cost workers coming from San Francisco to Marin an extra $250 a year. And while the hike alone isn’t likely to send employees packing for another gig, it does raise the question of how Marin employers will address the rising cost of the commute.
But an even larger commute issue looms—and no, it isn’t the SMART train (so Mike Arnold, put your pen away and return to your seat). I’m talking about the Doyle Drive retrofit project in San Francisco and how it’s going to get paid for. Doyle Drive is the elevated portion of Highway 101 through the Presidio that leads to the bridge. Like the bridge, it also requires a seismic repair and, like the bridge, funding is scarce. Unlike the bridge, however, the state of California is responsible for picking up the tab (the bridge is owned and operated by the GGBHTD and, as such, not beholden to the guys in the orange trucks for cash or repairs).
But the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) has told Marin County officials that the bridge district should collect another $2 per car to raise money for the repair…and if commuters and North Bay residents feel like they’re getting screwed with their pants on, that’s just the way it goes in the big leagues.
The MTC is pushing Marin to eat the increase and smile, because the feds have agreed to pony up $158 million in transportation aid to the Bay Area if the toll is approved. The carrot for Marin is almost $13 million would flow for improvements for the Larkspur ferry parking lot, which is currently doing an impression of a sardine can. The toll increase is also favored by the City of San Francisco.
It should be noted that MTC chair Bill Dodd understands the extra toll is a political powder keg. Dodd is from Napa, and drivers from his city are going to pay more than their fair share should they venture into San Francisco. He’s also floated a plan to raise the toll just $1 if local politicians will support the increase. For the record, all five Marin Supervisors, as well as Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and Carole Migden (D-San Francisco), are against the Doyle hike being levied on Marin. The bridge district is ticked off about being toll collector for the state, and members of the bridge board are, for the most part, against it.
The plan to have the bridge district collect a toll—that doesn’t belong to them and only from southbound drivers—to pay for a state-owned highway in San Francisco can easily be seen as another forward-thinking finance plan from the gang who can’t shoot straight out of Washington, D.C. But the fact that the MTC is willing to go along (and has even gone as far as veiled threats of political and financial retribution) should be enough to get the attention of most folks with IQs larger than their hat size. Especially Marin business owners, who need to worry about where their employees and customers come from as well as how goods are shipped and how merchandise makes it to marketplaces.
