Dear Judy Borello,
My husband, David Mease, and I are asking for help in our efforts to prevent Marin County from taking a portion of our private property for public recreational uses. We were given your name by Mike and Sally Gale of Chileno Valley Ranch, who thought you might be interested in what the County is attempting to do on our property.

David and I own a 40-acre parcel in Nicasio. We have a four year-old vineyard of 1,500 pinot noir vines which is registered as Moon Hill Vineyard. Our first harvest (2004) recently went in to bottle and this year's harvest is currently in oak. We plan to expand the vineyard to approximately 5,000 vines over the next few years.

A fire protection road runs across our property for approximately 2,000 ft. The fire road is adjacent to the existing vineyard and runs directly through the middle of our primary plantable acreage, since the balance of our property is fairly wooded and steeply sloped.

Our problems started when we submitted an application to the Marin Planning Department to build a house. The portion of the fire road that crosses our property is designated a "proposed" trail in the County's Trails Map, which is part of the Countywide Plan. Since the fire road is shown as a "proposed" trail, for over two years the Planning Department refused to deem our application complete until we agreed to dedicate a 20-foot wide multi-use (hikers, horses and bikers) public trail easement along the entire length of the fire road. After resisting the pressure to do so, the Planning Department finally acknowledged that it could not legally require us to dedicate an easement and a Planning staff report was issued recommending approval of our plans.

Last month our project went before the Marin Planning Commission. At the hearing, although Planning staff had already determined that the County could not legally require a public trail easement, approximately 50 horse riders and hikers demanded that the Commission stop us from building our house unless we did so. Their position was that since a proposed trail is shown going across our property, they are entitled to an easement.

Although the hearing was continued and no decision made, we have since been told that even if the Planning Commission approves our project without the easement, the County will then try to obtain it by eminent domain. We simply do not understand this given the fact that the Marin County Open Space District owns all of the land that borders our entire property line and the County could build its own trail connector on what is already public property.

We have offered to work with the County to design a trail that would go around our property, but have been told that this would be too expensive. Obviously, if we have a multi-use trail for hikers (and their dogs), horse riders and bike riders for the public-at large running directly through our growing areas, our dreams of developing a viable vineyard operation will be severely threatened. We believe that the taking of our private property for public recreation uses violates many of the County's own codes and policies, which emphasize the importance of preserving agricultural land and which extol the community benefits of small-scale agriculture.

We were informed that the County intends to get the trail easement any way it can because the group of hikers and horse riders that appeared at our hearing "wants it." If this is the standard against which the County measures whose property to take, then all private property in Marin is at risk. We believe that the County should be placed on notice that the Marin community also includes people who value private property rights.

If you agree with our concerns that agricultural land and private property should not be taken for public recreational use, we ask that you write to Supervisor Steve Kinsey to object to the County's threatened legal action to take our property. The information to write Supervisor Kinsey is:

Supervisor Steve Kinsey
3501 Civic Center Drive, Room 329
San Rafael, CA 94903
skinsey@co.marin.ca.us.

If you are interested in any further information, please feel free to e-mail me at csalah@hotmail.com or call 415-461-6265. Any help that you could offer in our efforts to save our property from a governmental taking would be very much appreciated.

Catherine Salah and David Mease

Private Property In Jeopardy
Sharing this letter you will comprehend the fact that the county attempts to blackmail owners of property out of their land use rights and how the elitist honey-do people demand to trespass on your land. They and others can trespass on your property and you are responsible for the liability, the cleanup of hundreds of pounds of horsey doo-doo, doggie doo-doo and people's garbage-not the county who allowed it, nor the hikers and horseback riders themselves.

They are many earthy horseback riders who wouldn't think of corssing into private property when they have 80,000 acres of Parkland to stroll through.

Some of them have backyards as we do, and how would they like it if we trespassed across their property in order to get from point A to point B a little easier. Now with the new eminent domain law ruled by the supreme court, takings will become more common and prevalent!