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Media Center seeks funding channels
Sausalito schools entering chartered territory? A paid consultant has recommended that the Sausalito Marin City School District consolidate its elementary and middle schools and re-emerge as a single charter school in order to right its wayward academic ship. San Francisco’s FSG consulting firm—following a year of interviews with district students, parents and teachers—is suggesting Sausalito Marin City close Bayside Elementary and transform Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School into a chartered K-8, similar to nearby Willow Creek Academy. For nearly 10 years, Willow Creek has found success among a growing number of charter schools, which are publicly funded, but establish their own “charter” of rules and education methods. Willow Creek describes itself as having a “flavor” of Montessori methods, which emphasize hands-on learning and parent participation. All three schools are at the north end of Sausalito on Nevada Street, just west of Bridgeway. FSG was hired as part of a five-year plan to curb achievement gaps in such Marin school districts as Sausalito-Marin City, San Rafael, Shoreline and Novato. A community meeting is slated for March 22 in Marin City.
Telecommunications Agency could pull plug on Comcast agreement by Pe te r Se i d m an
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ince the Community Media Center of Marin began operations almost two years ago, it has blossomed. “It would be a shame to see it die on the vine,” says Michael Eisenmenger, the center’s executive director. Eisenmenger, as well as members of the center’s board of directors, wants the Marin Telecommunications Agency (MTA) to move from the current franchise agreement with Comcast to a new statewide franchise agreement that would ensure continued funding for the Media Center. The MTA contract with Comcast, which runs to 2016, was approved in 2006, ending six years of negotiations that involved three cable companies. The negotiations started with TCI, which provided cable service in Marin before AT&T moved in. (There’s an irony there. More later). Then Comcast took over, and it now provides cable service to about 62,000 customers in most of Marin. MTA, the joint powers agency comprising cities in the Comcast region as well as the county, worked to create the Media Center, which is the nonprofit designated access provider charged with supplying public, educational and governmental (PEG) programming. Public access programming is a federal mandate. When cable came on the telecommunications scene, the govern-
ment viewed it as similar to broadcast networks, which were mandated to offer programming in the public interest. Cable companies were required to do the same—providing free and open access on cable to fulfill the community commitment. Theoretically, cable companies would promote public access and help open the cable medium to new ideas and participants. Anyone could produce and cablecast any content as long as it met decency standards. In addition, the mandate fostered government-channel programming as well as educational content (PEG). And a cable company had to distribute it. But the federal commitment was diluted to the point that it was enough for a cable company to merely offer a channel or channels for public programming, without any responsibility for creating content or promoting access. The MTA had almost completed negotiations with AT&T when Comcast supplanted it. Comcast said it would agree to a fairly standard 5 percent franchise fee distributed to members of the MTA. The agency thought another key provision in its negotiations with AT&T would transfer to Comcast: a commitment of $12 million during the life of the contract to fund PEG. But Comcast had entered troubled financial water and started to look 9 >
CPUC gets Marinized! The California Public Utilities Commission may have a new Mill Valley mind-set, as Gov. Jerry Brown has appointed MV resident Mark Ferron to the state body charged with consumer protection and regulating utilities. Prior to his appointment to the $128,000-and-change CPUC position, Ferron, 52, had spent much of his career in banking—VP at Bank of America and global-market chief at Deutsche Bank highlight his resume—before taking on his most recent role as senior partner at a South Bay “donor network” called Silicon Valley Social Ventures. On July 1, 2010, according to www.followthemoney.org, Ferron made a donation to Brown’s campaign for governor to the tune of $25,900. The appointment is still waiting to be confirmed by the state Senate. Ferron approaches a seat on the five-member commission as it wades through a storm of recent criticism that it has been too soft on the companies it is charged with regulating. Dominican taps ‘Dean Marcy’ Get ready Dominican students—there’s a new dean in town. Or at least there will be once Joseph Fink steps down after 23 years as the university’s president following the spring semester. School officials will be welcoming Mary B. Marcy as its new chief—only the ninth president the school has had since its founding in 1890. Marcy has most recently been head of Bard College in New York, working largely in areas of higher-education reform. Her official start date is July 1. SMART bike path may be hitting the skids SMART train officials said March 16 they are considering slamming the hand brakes on a stretch of the bike and pedestrian pathway portion of the controversial rail plan—a part that was crucial in gaining support for the voter-approved rail transit project from the local cycling community. A $104 million shortfall in funding for the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit train could be alleviated, planners believe, by about $14 million by postponing the construction of a third of the bike path—also floated at the March 16 cost-cutting meeting was delaying two-thirds of the path, which would save $28 million. The news didn’t sit well with Marin bike advocates, whose support for SMART was key in passing 2008’s Measure Q, a quarter-cent sales-tax proposal to build commuter rail and a pedestrian-bike path from Cloverdale to Larkspur. The dire economy has left SMART well in the red and the plan has already scaled back the length of the initial construction— which will at first simply be from Santa Rosa to downtown San Rafael by 2014. Other savings measures bandied about by SMART officials include delaying the replacement of a Novato Creek bridge (about $5 million); strengthening—instead of replacing—the Petaluma River Haystack Bridge ($15 million); and postponing the establishment of rail stations at Atherton in Novato ($5.3 million) and Petaluma’s Corona Road Station ($11.5 million). Speed limit bumped to assuage Atherton lead foots Are the county supes creating Autobahn-Marin? Some Atherton Avenue neighbors are saying as much, after a two-and-a-half mile stretch from Highway 37 to Bugeia Lane in unincorporated land north of Novato will see its speed limit leap from 40 to 45 mph in a state-mandated move to stay in step with speed trends of drivers using the road. The supes said their hands were tied last week when approving the uptick after a recent traffic survey indicated that the vast majority of vehicles—as many as 85 percent—on Atherton travel at faster than 45 mph; if the speed limit were to stay at 40, it would be considered an unfair “speed trap” by the courts and any speeding tickets issued on that stretch would likely be tossed out. Neighbors, meanwhile, argue that increasing the speed on such a twisting, poorly lit rural road would become an even bigger safety hazard than it already is.—Jason Walsh
8 PACIFIC SUN MARCH 25 - MARCH 31, 2011