✿Mill Valley Daily
The Week in Mill Valley · July 19 – July 25, 2026
Zoning Administrator · agenda, meeting of Tuesday, July 21

Owners seek to swap a small shed for a 1,000-square-foot ADU — and more floor area than the rules allow

The week's only real land-use fight, such as it was, played out on paper at Tuesday's Zoning Administrator meeting. At 288 E Blithedale Avenue, on a 6,229-square-foot RS-6 lot, the owners want to tear down a modest 329-square-foot accessory structure and replace it with a detached 1,000-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit behind the existing house. Because the new ADU doesn't qualify for the floor-area exemption, the application also asks the city for an exception to exceed the adjusted floor area limit — the part of the proposal most likely to raise eyebrows. Two non-heritage redwood trunks would come down to make room.

Two doors down the same street, at 510 E Blithedale Avenue, a separate application asks to remove a single, healthy coast redwood — 61 inches in diameter and about 40 feet tall — standing in the front yard next to the sidewalk. Neither item drew a staff recommendation or comments in the posted agenda, and the city listed both as categorically exempt from CEQA review.

Nothing here rises to a full public hearing yet, but the floor-area exception at 288 E Blithedale is the one worth watching: it's the kind of ask that, on a tight in-town lot, tends to bring neighbors out once a decision date is set.

Agenda PDF|📍 Map
City alerts · posted Wednesday, July 22

PG&E warns of a power shutoff in parts of Mill Valley — but the city's own notice has the wrong date

The city relayed a PG&E warning Wednesday that a Public Safety Power Shutoff was planned for parts of southern Marin County, including parts of Mill Valley, with a start window of 2 p.m. But the alert's headline and text refer to the shutoff starting "tomorrow, 7/15/26" — a date more than a week out of step with the July 22 timestamp on the city's own feed.

That mismatch means residents in any affected pockets shouldn't take the date in the notice at face value; the safer move is to check the city's alert page and PG&E's live outage map for the current status. The notice doesn't specify which streets or neighborhoods would lose power, only that it's "parts" of town, not citywide.

PSPS events are precautionary, triggered by high fire-weather risk rather than an active outage, but the confusing date is a reminder to treat these city-relayed alerts as a pointer to the source, not the final word.

City alert (PSPS)

Also in Mill Valley