Merchants and neighbors clash over Old Corte Madera Square parking

A consultant's parking study for Old Corte Madera Square landed on the council's desk this week with a modest rewrite: restrict all parking in the Menke Park lot and cut its time limit from 4 hours to 2, add four new 1-hour spots on Montecito Drive, mark unmarked gravel spots near the trail with a 72-hour limit, and lift the 4-hour cap on Corte Madera Avenue past 1st Street, making it unrestricted. Staff explicitly ruled out a residential parking permit program.

“We have a very small team of enforcements employees in Corte Madera and if it is too default to enforce, such as the ADU ordinance, it will not be successful.”— Jim Rizzo, 16 Serra Street, in written comment on the parking study

Lisa Jones, who runs Masterworks Kids' Fine Art on Montecito Drive, largely backed the study but wants more: dedicated spots at the end of her building, and an end to what she calls neighbors who 'abuse the spots with multiple cars and beyond 72-hour parking,' ignoring her requests to ease up. Jim Rizzo of 16 Serra Street took the opposite view, calling the underlying study inadequate because it was based on a single day of observation. 'This is not an adequate "study" of the issue,' he wrote, arguing long-term employee cars, not shoppers, are the real culprit, and pushing instead for 2-hour permit parking with resident guest passes on Redwood, Serra, Montecito and Willow, plus a dedicated employee lot.

The council held the hearing and introduced the ordinance amendment Tuesday; a resolution and second reading will have to follow at a future meeting before any new limits take effect.

Families rally to defend REC INC programs for disabled adults

A wave of letters hit the council this week over REC INC, the town's recreation program for adults with developmental disabilities, after staff moved to discontinue or disrupt signature events including the 3rd Friday Dance, Lions Club activities, basketball, sports night and party night.

“Rec Inc has created something singular in Marin: a place where people with developmental disabilities are not on the sidelines of community life, but are welcomed into it. That kind of belonging takes years to build, and it would be heartbreaking to see it diminished or lost.”— Neelama Eyres, mother of Kai Schiesser

Parents and partner nonprofits said the cuts would erase something hard to rebuild. 'It is unconscionable that Corte Madera would discontinue these vital community events,' wrote Jennifer Kirmse. Nancy Dow Moody of Lifehouse urged the town to keep the programs at their current level and lean on former staffer Erin Duggan's institutional knowledge while training replacements, and Thea Yoshida of Community Homes & Services offered to help find a path back, writing, 'We would welcome the chance to talk about what it would take to bring these programs back.'

Several commenters asked that families be included in any decisions about the program's future; no council response or vote on REC INC's fate has been recorded yet.

Flood board faces funding gap as berm costs climb

The numbers behind the town's flood defenses came into sharper focus this week as the Flood Control Board prepares to formally obligate a FEMA Flood Mitigation Assistance grant for the Marina Village berm at Monday's meeting. Minutes from the board's August session show the town recently accepted a $105,000 grant from the Marin Community Foundation for preliminary engineering, matched dollar for dollar by the town, with staff estimating design alone at $1.5 million to $1.8 million and construction around $10 million — against roughly $250,000 currently on hand.

The scale of the broader problem is larger still. Board members and residents have been discussing a full regional fix running from Marine Country Mart to Paradise Drive, shielding the CHP station and Highway 101, estimated at $190 million; Chair Blomgren has argued such a project shouldn't fall to Corte Madera alone. Resident Roy Wolford has floated cheaper interim options — removable masonry panels or water-filled 'guppy tube' barriers running $65,000 to $100,000 per home — and suggested the roughly 1,100 at-risk properties in the flood zone pool their purchasing power.

Frustration has surfaced in the discussion: Board Member Wolfers said he feels largely unable to give residents meaningful answers about when a durable fix will arrive, and an account read into the record described a Mariner Cove resident finding no sand or bags at the sandbag station ahead of an August high tide. Wolford has pushed for a joint session of the board, Town Manager, Mayor and Town Attorney to sort out who is actually responsible for flood defense townwide.

Council advances plan to legalize duplex at 125 Baltimore Avenue

At 125-127 Baltimore Avenue, a two-unit residential building has sat for years out of step with its own zoning and General Plan designation, both of which call for single-family use. The Planning Commission recommended fixing that mismatch back on August 11, and Tuesday the council opened a public hearing to do it.

The council adopted Resolution No. 42/2026, redesignating the parcel from Low Density Residential to Medium Density Residential in the General Plan, and introduced a zoning ordinance to rezone it from R-1 to R-2 — bringing the existing legal nonconforming duplex into conformance rather than requiring it be altered or removed. Because the change touches the General Plan, the ordinance still needs a second reading at a future meeting before it's final.

The fix also clears the way for a separate step down the road: a lot line adjustment to correct an encroachment from a neighboring home onto the property line, which the town says will be processed once the underlying zoning matches reality. No neighbor comments were filed ahead of the hearing.