Amid a strong showing of support from the community, Tiburon’s lower Main Street will be closed to cars on weekends this summer to encourage physically distant outdoor dining and retail during the coronavirus pandemic. The Town Council voted unanimously at its June 17 teleconference meeting to approve the one-block closure of Main Street between Fountain Plaza and the traffic circle near the entrance to the Main Street Parking Lot from Friday afternoons to 8 p.m. Sundays beginning July 3, the first day of a long holiday weekend. The “slow street” weekends, as such programs have been dubbed around the nation, would run through Labor Day, Sept. 7.

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As the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police sparked nationwide protests to reform and defund police departments, Tiburon and Belvedere officials are examining first-step changes to their own use-of-force policies under the guidelines of the growing “8 Can’t Wait” movement. But even after issuing updates, in several cases where the guidelines ask departments to “require” or “ban” actions, Tiburon’s and Belvedere’s policies still leave considerable room for officer discretion — including the use of carotid restraints, a “sleeper hold” that cuts off blood flow to the brain and is being banned across California and the nation. (BREAKING: Tiburon police on June 24 announced the department has now banned carotid holds.)

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JUNE 23 — Marin public-health officials have announced residents can now join 12-person “social bubbles” and added that indoor dining, hair salons and barbershops, nail salons, hotels, motels and short-term rentals can resume operation this month, alongside gyms and fitness studios.

The indoor activities firing up June 29 will coincide with the reopening of additional outdoor activities as part of Marin’s sector-by-sector reopening of the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. The guidelines to be issued this week will include the use of picnic areas and barbecues at public parks, as well as campgrounds, RV parks and other outdoor vehicle-based activities like drive-in movies, officials said.

The county has also announced guidelines for reopening schools in the fall, with kids in class five days a week.

Meanwhile, Tiburon saw at least two new COVID-19 cases, registering the town for the first time on the county’s geographic case maps, and Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide mask order th...

Retail shops on the Tiburon Peninsula can once again welcome customers inside under the latest changes to the county’s shelter-in-place order, as long as they follow new distancing and safety rules aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Yema, an athletic-wear boutique at 10 Main St. on Tiburon’s Fountain Plaza, planned to open over the weekend, but store owner Yema Khalif said he would be taking things slow. “We’re going to start off by opening four hours a day,” Khalif said. “If business is good, we’ll extend it to next weekend.” (Elliot Karlan photo / For The Ark)

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Holding handmade signs reading “Silence equals violence,” “Equal justice under the law” and “Racism is a pandemic too,” more than 50 people lined Tiburon Boulevard near Tom Price Park June 11 to rally against racial injustice and police brutality and show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The local event came amid the third week of similar gatherings across the country prompted by the death of George Floyd, a 46-year old black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police office knelt on his neck for more than 8 minutes. Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down in the street at the time. The official and independent autopsy reports ruled the death a homicide, and all four officers who took part in the arrest have since been fired, arrested and charged. (Elliot Karlan photo / For The Ark)

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Belvedere will seek an interim appointment to fill an impending vacancy on the City Council, rather than hold a special election, after longtime Councilmember and Mayor Marty Winter steps down effective June 30. Winter announced last month he would be resigning as he and wife Barbara plan to move outside the city’s limits to Paradise Drive in unincorporated Tiburon. Their Belvedere Lagoon home of more than 30 years is up for sale.

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Despite a surge in the rate of new COVID-19 infections across Marin that’s outpacing the county’s increase in testing, health officials last week continued to reopen the economy by issuing new public-health guidelines that allow for indoor retail, automotive sales and household cleaning services. 

Health officials are also looking ahead, saying they hope to restart indoor dining service and reopen hair salons, gyms and hotels in Marin by June 29 — even if it requires petitioning the state for permission to move forward. 

California and 18 other states saw a rise in new cases last week as states stepped up testing, but also as economies reopened and new infections from Memorial Day weekend activities and early Black Lives Matter protests began to register in county health departments. Marin continues to have the highest rate of new infections in the Bay Area at 82.4 cases per 100,000 residents, ranking it eighth worst among California’s 58 counties, according to an Ark survey of counties....

Richardson Bay homeowners found their blue-water views turned slimy green last week as a large algae bloom choked harbors, lagoons and miles of shoreline along Strawberry Point. The lime-green algae appeared early last week, carpeting shallow waterways and shorelines from Sausalito to Aramburu Island and Strawberry Cove and as far afield as Paradise Cay on the northeast shores of the Tiburon Peninsula. (Elliot Karlan photo / For The Ark)

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After an extensive power shutdown last October left nearly 3 million Californians — including residents of Tiburon, Belvedere and Strawberry — in the dark for several days, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said it’s devising ways to lessen the impacts of outages this fire season, especially in areas deemed low fire risk like the Tiburon Peninsula. During a June 10 webinar for residents in Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda counties, PG&E officials detailed plans to make this year’s so-called public-safety power shutoffs “smaller in size, shorter in length and smarter for customers” by implementing new technology like microgrids and sectionalizing devices, as well as increasing line-inspection capabilities so electricity can be restored more quickly. 

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The Richardson Bay Regional Agency will move forward with its transition plan to clear the bay of unseaworthy vessels, despite complaints from stakeholders the plan lacks specifics and warnings from the anchor-out community they won’t go along. The agency’s board of directors voted unanimously at its June 11 teleconference meeting to approve a five-point plan meant to ensure vessels between Belvedere and Sausalito conform to state and local seaworthiness standards by October 2021. Of the 90 vessels on the anchorage in 2019, only about 20 meet the criteria so far.

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Prominent land-developer Javier A. Burillo of Belvedere has been charged with manslaughter, child endangerment and drunken driving in a September boating accident near Angel Island that killed his 11-year-old son and severely injured the boy’s older brother. 

According to a criminal complaint filed June 11 by the Marin County District Attorney’s Office, Burillo, 58, is facing three felony counts of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, operation of a watercraft while under the influence and child endangerment, as well as a misdemeanor count of operating a watercraft with a blood-alcohol level above the state legal limit of .08 percent. 

If found guilty on all counts, Burillo could face up to nine years in state prison. 

He is set to be arraigned at 8:30 a.m. July 17 in Marin County Superior Court. 

Marin County District Attorney Lori Frugoli declined to comment on the charges, which come some nine months after Burillo was initially arrested. 

Authorities say Burillo was operating...

A group of about 40 Del Mar Middle School students and parents walked Blackie’s Pasture and the Old Rail Trail June 6 to protest racial bias and show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The local event was one of two peaceful protests against racism and police brutality organized by students over the weekend. On June 7, Redwood High School students and community members gathered at the school’s Larkspur campus for an event sponsored by the school’s Students Organized for Anti-Racism club.

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Tiburon Police Chief Michael Cronin last week apologized for his word choice in a warning to residents that a peaceful protest in Marin City against racism and police brutality could result in mayhem that targeted Tiburon. Cronin’s initial June 1 message drew an immediate and vocal response from the community: Some online thanked the Police Department for working to protect residents and businesses. Others called Cronin’s message “inflaming” and “tone deaf” for tying the potential for violence to the march in Marin City, which has the county’s largest black population at nearly 40 percent of residents, and for effectively telling Tiburon residents not to participate by advising against travel on southbound Highway 101. Dozens of people called the department to voice their opinions, and at least one Main Street business boarded up its windows.

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The town of Tiburon will enable daily outdoor dining on Fountain Plaza and make it easier for merchants to do business outdoors amid the coronavirus pandemic — the latter move already paving the way for Luna Blu, Salt & Pepper and Waypoint Pizza to bring new options to Main Street. At its June 3 teleconference meeting, the Town Council voted unanimously to temporarily suspend all town regulations that could otherwise prohibit businesses from engaging in their business activities outside. In a separate unanimous vote, the council approved a proposal from the Tiburon Small Business Relief Task Force to purchase four new tables and benches that would be placed around Fountain Plaza to create an outdoor-dining area for those buying food from downtown restaurants. The council may go one step further to facilitate outdoor dining and sales activity at its June 17 meeting, when it’s set to consider a proposal from the task force to close Main Street to vehicular traffic Friday afternoons throu...

JUNE 9 — Worship and cultural ceremonies, peaceful protests and use of swimming pools are among the outdoor activities that can resume on the Tiburon Peninsula and across Marin under a surprise announcement from the county last week, which came even as Marin has the highest coronavirus new-case rate in the Bay Area, infections surpassed 500 countywide and Marin recorded three new deaths, the first in nearly a month.

Dr. Matt Willis, Marin’s public-health officer, said the acceleration in cases is driven mostly within the county’s low-income communities, where about 85 percent of new cases over the past two weeks were among Latinos, largely those living in San Rafael’s Canal district.

In a powerful message posted to YouTube last week, Willis discussed the nationwide protests surrounding the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer and pointed to Marin’s health-care gap and structural, institutionalized conditions that have left some populations vulnerable.

“The pr...