WE HAVE A LEGAL PATH.

BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP TO FUND IT.

The Marina Safeway fight has reached a critical moment.

We believe there is a viable legal path to challenge what is happening. But unless we can raise the money to pay for that fight, the case may never be heard.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

State housing laws championed by Senator Scott Wiener have steadily stripped away many of the checks and balances communities and local elected officials once relied upon to scrutinize major development projects, even when serious environmental and public-safety questions remain. For the Marina Safeway, it’s already happening:

• Planning Commission hearings no longer required.
  
• Traditional environmental review is being bypassed.
  
• Board of Supervisors does not get a vote on the project's approval.
  
• Even elected officials who oppose a project have little power to stop it.

In the case of the Marina Safeway, an 848-unit development with towers reaching 22 stories located on a site known to be contaminated with hazardous waste is being processed for streamlined, ministerial approval, without an adequate investigation of the contamination, let alone a plan for cleaning it up.

And when the law isn't clear, when there are legitimate questions and gray areas about whether a project even qualifies for these extreme variances from normal approval processes, the Planning Director interprets those rules and makes the eligibility determination.

On August 14, the Planning Director determined that the Marina Safeway project qualifies for AB 2011 fast-track approval. That decision started the final 90-day clock.

The City now has up to 90 days to approve or deny the project ministerially, without a Planning Commission hearing, a Board of Supervisors vote, or the traditional discretionary review process.



That is an extraordinary amount of power over an extraordinary project that presents extraordinary risks, with remarkably little public recourse.

We have spent months pursuing virtually every avenue available to us.

• 1,200+ emails sent to City Hall
  
• 400+ people at our Community Town Hall
  
• Legal challenges submitted to City officials
  
• Appeals to the Mayor, Supervisor, Planning and state officials

We have raised serious questions about contamination, liquefaction, flooding, environmental testing, public safety and whether the project legally qualifies for AB 2011 streamlining.

But that is precisely the system Senator Wiener helped create: when communities object, elected officials can say their hands are tied, City Hall can point to state law, and the public is left with fewer and fewer places to turn.

The result is a system that gives developers extraordinary rights while leaving the people who actually live here fighting simply to have their concerns heard.

That leaves one institution capable of independently determining whether the law has been followed:

THE COURTS.