Politics & Government

Moulton-Peters Caps Busy Debut on SMART Board

Mill Valley City Councilwoman's appointment to rail board comes amidst an effort to repeal its funding mechanism and a lawsuit over the Transportation Authority of Marin's $8 million contribution to it.

hasn’t exactly had the luxury of easing her way into her latest role.

The Mill Valley city councilwoman was sworn in last week as the representative of the Marin County Council of Mayors and Councilmembers (MCCMC) on the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) district board.

In the 10 days since she was appointed to replace Larkspur City Councilwoman Joan Lundstrom at SMART, Moulton-Peters has dealt with , a the sales tax measure that funds SMART and a over the Transportation Authority of Marin’s (TAM) $8 million contribution to it.

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“It’s been a bit more of an exciting first week then I expected,” she said.

Moulton-Peters, an environmental consultant and longtime advocate for non-motorized transit, was elected to the city council in 2007, along with Ken Wachtel and Garry Lion. She was appointed to serve out former councilman Dick Swanson’s TAM term in January 2008 and appointed to her own four-year term in May 2010.

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The unexpected excitement for Moulton-Peters began at the TAM board’s June 23 meeting, when it to SMART as part of a multi-agency effort to address the controversial rail project’s $21 million budget gap from an already scaled back iteration from Santa Rosa to San Rafael. The first-approved route between Cloverdale and Larkspur had a $150 million shortfall.

The initial vote at the June 23 TAM board meeting deadlocked at 7-7. After a short break, the board reconvened and Lundstrom switched, making the new vote 8-6 in favor of the $8 million boost. The board then agreed to vote again on the matter at its because several attendees left the meeting before the re-vote.

On the day of that second meeting, RepealSMART, a group founded by Novato resident John Parnell, accusing the TAM board of violating open-meeting laws and misleading the public in regard to the use of sales tax revenues. The TAM contribution to SMART tapped Measure A transportation funds, passed as a half-cent sales tax increase by voters in 2004.

The lawsuit also accused several TAM board members, including Moulton-Peters, of a conflict of interest in serving on both the TAM and SMART boards. Moulton-Peters wasn’t yet on the SMART board at the time of the June 23 TAM board vote. The legislation that created SMART said that the MCCMC rep on the SMART board must also sit on the TAM board so as to be well versed in local and regional transit issues.

Marin County Counsel Patrick Faulkner has backed Moulton-Peters and the others serving on both the TAM and SMART boards, including Supervisors Steve Kinsey, and Judy Arnold.

Despite the controversy, Moulton-Peters said she is exactly where she wants to be, in the middle of a swirl of transit-related decisions impacting the future of Marin. As a longtime leader for local Safe Routes to Schools advocacy, she's particularly interested in the multi-use paths connected to SMART.

She’s also undeterred by the fact that Mill Valley isn’t home to a SMART stop, either in the original or scaled-back iteration.

“Mill Valley is not served by SMART but Mill Valley thinks more regionally about these issues,” she said. “We also benefit directly if cars are taken off the highway by people riding the train. More and more people are traveling north for work, and that includes residents from our town.”


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