Strawberry man wins suit over diluted community land-use plans

A Marin court has sided with a Strawberry resident that the county’s new eight-year housing roadmap illegally weakened the 24 community plans that tightly control land use and development in unincorporated areas.

But as the county prepares to update zoning to conform with its revisions to the 2023-2031 housing element, longtime resident Bruce Corcoran is already back in court to extend the judicial order and make sure Marin complies with the ruling.

“(The county has) done something unlawful, and they can’t keep doing unlawful things based on something that is unlawful,” he told The Ark last week.

In the March 25 ruling, Superior Court Judge Sheila Shah Lichtblau ordered the county to remove three new “precedence clauses” in the countywide plan — language that says, for example, that “when inconsistencies exist” between the countywide and community plans, “the countywide plan prevails.”

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