Public Comment: Marin County Board of Supervisors special budget meeting

On February 23-25, 2026 the Board of Supervisors held a three day special meeting workshop to discuss the upcoming budget. Call Marin Home Program Manager Lizzy Stahl gave public comment at the February 24, 2026 meeting. Her talking points and notes are below.

Marin County Board of Supervisors public comment talking points – February 24, 2026

  • Commend County for seeking pro-housing designation. 
    • Currently, Marin County is the only County of the 9 Counties of the Bay Area without a single jurisdiction with a pro-housing designation.
    • Achieving this designation will make us more competitive for existing funding sources
    • This is important as we know that there is no way to achieve our affordable housing goals without additional outside funding. 
  • Community Development Agency Workplan
    • We would like to see greater emphasis and accountability for actually meeting our RHNA goals. 
    • It’s important that you are doing the work to implement the housing element programs, and we commend the hard work and collaboration the County has done to make the Tiny Homes in Pt Reyes happen.
    • But we also need to meet our housing goals. As of the last Annual Progress Report, Marin County only had 6% of its goals met, and if anything, the pace of approvals is slowing.
    • We are now 3 years into this housing cycle. We have enough data to say that the plan we created will not achieve our RHNA goals. Despite the work done, the pace of permitting has not increased. 
    • Addressing this shortfall should be a part of our plan. Especially since our county-specific analysis – specifically the West Marin Housing Solutions report and Rooted in Marin – recommend much stronger action than what is in our Housing Element. It is not enough to say that we will execute programs and approve applications that come in. If we aren’t getting enough applications, and we are not, then we need to make adjustments so we get applications. 
  • The Strategic Scan affirms the importance of building housing. Some of the challenges and risks identified, including falling population, stagnation of property taxes, loss of jobs, decline of school age kids are all directly connected to our failure to build sufficient housing over the past 40 years. The county’s survey supports that Marin residents want housing. We don’t need to wait for a strategic plan to start making changes. 
  • Lastly, we seek more transparency in resources allocated to housing in this budget. The allocation of funding to housing, and particularly to the affordable housing trust fund are not accessible in these documents. 
    • Housing is our top priority and we are far behind in our goals. We would like to see the County allocations match this reality, and work towards a sizable increase. 

Relevant documents