Election Filing Period Ends Tomorrow

The filing period for open seats in the Nov. 2 election closes at 5pm tomorrow. With no city council seats and few municipal agency boards up for election this fall, most of the Marin electorate will focus on contentious races for two countywide boards, each with a divisive issue at its heart.

Four of the five seats on the Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) board are up for election this fall, and the battle lines likely will be drawn over the issue of desalination. The district board has put a measure on the ballot to compete with one put forth by opponents of desalination.

For the Marin Healthcare District, three seats are open in the fall, and the district's termination of Sutter Health as the operator of Marin General Hospital and the hospital's future direction should dominate the debate.

For the MMWD board, the seat of Cynthia Koehler, whose District IV includes Mill Valley, Alto, Homestead Valley and a portion of Tam Valley, is up for election. Koehler is running for re-election, and she'll face two candidates with distinct backgrounds.

Mill Valley resident Sashi McEntee is the former chair of the Marin Republican Party and a vocal proponent of the public's right to vote on desalination. McEntee was tossed out of that slot late last month in a decisive vote by the party's central committee following a disagreement over an opinion column she wrote for the Marin Independent Journal that endorsed Proposition 14 without clearing it with the party first.

The third candidate is Mill Valley resident Larry Rose, who was a senior public health officer in Cal-OSHA for 28 years. Rose is a member of the Marin Water Coalition, which opposes the district's desalination plans. The coalition is behind the Marin Responsible Water Policy initiative, one of two similar but competing ballot measures that will ask voters to decide of they should have a vote on the district's desalination efforts. The measures do so to different degrees, with the coalition's measure preventing the district from continuing to explore the issue of desalination until voters have a say.

Rose said that current desalination technology is not full-proof and that "it's clear that it's not ready to be used in water that is polluted as the [San Rafael] Bay."

There are three seats open in the fall for the Marin Healthcare District board, which does not divide its seats up geographically. In late June, the district ushered in a new era with the termination of Sutter Health as the operator of Marin General Hospital. The move ended the hospital's tumultuous, 5-year relationship with Sutter.

All three incumbents intend to run for re-election. A fourth candidate, Robert Karfiol of San Rafael, has taken out papers but has not yet decided if he will run.

"There's more work to be done," said incumbent Jamie Clever. "The best firewall of all to protect the hospital from the at times crazy politics on the district board is to have a tradition of good people running for office."

Board Chairman Larry Bedard said he anticipates a smooth transition and looks forward to taking to the voters a bond measure needed to finance construction of a new, earthquake-safe hospital building.

The district must complete the project by 2015, and intends to take a $250 million general obligation bond to voters in 2011. The bond will have to get two-thirds approval of voters in the healthcare district, which includes all of Marin except Novato.

"The board election and the bond issue will be one in the same in many ways," Clever said.

Upon the June 30 transition from Sutter, the district board appointed 11 people to the Marin General Hospital Corp.'s board of directors, including four Mill Valley residents: David Hill, Ann Kaom Paul Kirincic and Timothy Sowerby.

All five members of the Strawberry Recreation District board - Jennifer Klopfer, Jeff Francis, Julie Zener, Kelly Reade, and Peter Teese – intend to run for re-election. The district is an independent agency responsible for maintaining the community center, athletic facilities and parks of Strawberry.

Finally, in the race to succeed county Assessor Joan Thayer, two in-house candidates - Rich Benson and Shelly Scott - will square off in a November runoff.

Candidates must submit paperwork to run on Nov. 2 by Friday at 5pm. In seats where the incumbent chooses not to run again, the filing period will be extended to Aug. 11. The deadline for voters to register to vote in the Nov. 2 election is Oct. 18.