The Tiburon Town Council is working on principles for a 20-year blueprint to guide development and planning in the town.
At the Town Council meeting on Wednesday, consultants with Novato-based O’Rourke and Associates broke down the plan’s principles into three areas: livability, community and sustainability.
Within those areas, priorities include protecting open space, improving downtown vitality, addressing climate change, building multi-modal transportation, adding housing and promoting social and environmental equity, according to a town report.
“These are means of framing major themes on the general plan update,” said Bob Brown, a planner with the firm. “Or the areas where the council is telling us you’d like us to investigate and come up with policy options for you and the public to consider.”
The council directed the consultants to send the guiding principles out to the community for more vetting and input.
The town hired the firm in August to prepare the general plan update and the environmental impact report, according to a staff report. The town agreed to pay $794,019.
Community outreach has already started with a survey, workshops, interviews and a “Create Tiburon 2040” website. The timeline on the website says work to draft the plan is expected to start in November, and the Town Council could adopt the plan a year later.
Brown said the firm held interviews with property owners, downtown merchants, environmental agencies, town planners, county public work employees, library representatives, Reed Union School District officials, regional transportation agency officials and Tiburon fire officials.
In the online survey, about 448 residents, or 5%, of the town’s 9,150 residents responded. The majority were 50 to 59 years old. Their top concerns were the downtown’s economic viability, traffic, climate change, lack of demographic diversity and overdevelopment.
Councilman Jack Ryan said that while the survey is a good start, the consultants should try to reach a more diverse group of residents, particularly those below the age of 40 who will be most affected by the plan.
“I want to make sure we do more to engage the public and getting more people’s feedback,” Ryan said. “Statistically, getting 5% response is great, but you need to figure out ways to get to more of the public. … I would be very unhappy to plan the next 20 years based on too few opinions as opposed to a better representation of what public opinion really is.”
Brown said there was a better response by young people through social media.
Mayor Holli Thier said she would like the consultants to focus more on how the town will address climate change, sea level rise and emergency preparedness.
“I think the town has a problem that parts of our infrastructure are affected by county ownership, and the rest of the town owns different parts,” she said. “There should be a concerted effort on this.”
Many of the survey respondents showed a concern about protecting open space while also finding areas to add mixed-use housing.
Brown said it will be harder to preserve open space with new state housing laws. He added the increased housing requirements mandated by the Association of Bay Area Governments, which assigns a share of the region’s housing need to each city, town and county, will be the “elephant in the room.”
Under the new formula that seeks to address racial equity, Tiburon is expected to add 620 new residences from 2023 to 2031. In the last eight-year housing cycle, the town was required to add 72.
The new cycle requires that the town add 186 very-low-income residences, 107 low-income, 91 moderate-income and 236 above-moderate-income, according the the methodology report.
An online community workshop on safety, parks and open space is scheduled for March 30. Another about the downtown is scheduled for April 27. Residents can sign up at createtiburon2040.org.
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