Bolinas Supports Nature Bid
The quirky coastal hamlet of Bolinas is now officially a nature-loving town that also likes blueberries and bears and even skunks.
That, at least, is as good an interpretation as anyone has come up with for Measure G, a stream-of-consciousness initiative that passed Tuesday despite a wide variety of opinions about what exactly it would do for this far- out town north of Stinson Beach.
The measure, submitted by a woman who wears burlap and paints her face with chocolate, advises the Bolinas Community Public Utility District to adopt a policy defining the town as "a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful."
The Bolinas credo was the most karmic of all the elections Tuesday in Marin and Sonoma counties, where city council incumbents had mixed results. San Rafael Mayor Al Boro, however, was easily elected to his fourth straight term as the top office holder in that city, beating out challenger L.B. "Kyle" Keilman, III.
In Sonoma County, Cotati passed Measure B, which will allow big-box retail stores on 52 acres edged by state Highways 101 and 115 in order to boost sales tax revenues. Opponents said the measure would hurt local merchants, further clog streets and ruin Cotati's small town charm.
Petaluma, meanwhile, soundly rejected measures C and D, which would have imposed a 20-year special tax on utilities to pay for repairs on nearly 750 city streets.
But it was the Bolinas vote that garnered the most attention, mainly because it fits so well into a stereotype of west Marin County as one of the last bastions in America for the pot-smoking, tie-dyed, flower-waving Buddhist tree-huggers who roamed the Earth in the last millennium, particularly in the 1960s.
"Talk about a new paradigm,'' said one election watcher, who, like many of the residents in this notoriously insular town, asked not to be identified.
Henry Brady, a political science and public policy professor at UC Berkeley, said that if nothing else, the Bolinas measure shows anything is possible with the California initiative process.
"It has a Monty Python feeling about it, doesn't it?" Brady said. "It certainly shows that California has different kinds of places and people with different interests and ideas about what should go on the ballot. If we had a lot of this on the ballot I imagine we would get a little frustrated by it, but in this case it's fairly innocuous. If the motto of Bolinas is going to be that, well, perhaps that's just fine."
The author, Jane Blethen, whose nickname is "Dakar,'' moved to the Bay Area from Minnesota sometime in the 1960s and studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. She moved to Bolinas around 1980 and took up residence in the bushes.
Her erratic speech, unusual wardrobe and choice of habitation at first attracted the attention of local bullies, but the rest of the town soon adopted her as one of their own. A local rock band called "Don't Kill Jane" was formed in an attempt to spread the word that their lovable loner was off limits.
Blethen now walks around with a burlap headband and strips of burlap tied around her legs. Her face is a mask of smeared dark brown chocolate. Grains of pepper form speckles on the chocolate, like glitter.
"She's definitely a character's character,'' said Erik Festin, 68, of Bolinas, who used to give her rides and take her out for toast and coffee. "Her message is really pretty simple: 'take care of the animals and preserve the beauty of the place.' "
In the days before the election, several Bolinas residents confessed that they signed the petition mainly in order to avoid hurting Blethen's feelings. Whatever the motive, there were enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot -- and aside from some collateral damage to the English language and ambiguity about the fate of motor boats, hotels and airplanes, there did not seem to be any harm that could come in voting for Measure G. So they did. In other races, Novato City Council incumbents Michael Di Giorgio and John Mani suffered major upsets at the hands of newcomers Judy Arnold, an aide to state Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco, and Jeanne MacLeamy, an architect. The other incumbent, Carole Dillon-Knutson, was the top vote getter in an extremely close race.
In Larkspur, Laurence Chu, who opposes building affordable housing on a large chunk of local property, and longtime Larkspur School District Trustee Kathleen Hartzell, who supports the housing, beat out Lori Ocheltree, another supporter of the housing, and Albert McCloskey for two vacant seats on the City Council.
In San Rafael, incumbents Paul Cohen and Gary Phillips beat out Mark Harrold, a business consultant for their seats on the City Council. Boro was elected in a separate vote for mayor.