San Anselmo Councilman Ford Greene is clashing with town staff members over whether the studio apartment he lives in is a legal residential unit.
The squabble has prompted Councilman Jeff Kroot, who Greene has criticized for minimal compliance with town building regulations, to condemn Greene's observance of town planning rules.
The unit is located on the first floor of a turn of the 20th-century three-story building at 711 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. Greene purchased the building in 2001 and has lived in the studio apartment since the early 1990s, initially as a renter. His law office is on the second floor.
The town's interim planning director Diane Henderson, has issued a ruling denying Greene's initial contention that his unit should be "grandfathered" as legal ? because the building, built in 1909, has historically accommodated live/work occupancies.
The building has two single-bedroom apartments on the third floor that are currently occupied by tenants.
Henderson maintains there is no evidence that Greene's apartment was legally created as a residential unit.
She says that if Greene wishes to continue living there he must obtain a conditional use permit for residential use in a district zoned for large scale commercial uses.
Green has appealed Henderson's ruling and will present his argument to the town's planning commission Monday night.
Matthew Storms, a real estate agent who was the listing agent
when Greene bought the building in 2001, says that Greene was given a town-required resale report at that time which should have alerted him to a problem with using the space for residential use. The report stated that a living unit had apparently been installed in the basement without permits and did not meet building code requirements for habitable space.Storms said the report indicated the conditions had to be corrected if the unit was to be used for living space.
Greene, however, said, "I didn't get that report until the middle of August 2005."
That year, San Anselmo Building Official Keith Angerman notified Greene that the Marin Municipal Water district had complained that a toilet had been installed in Greene's building without a permit. Angerman cited the resale report at that time and directed Greene to begin the process of applying for the proper permits.
For Greene's unit to be grandfathered in under town law he would need to demonstrate that it has been continuously used as a residence since becoming non-conforming. But according to Vicki Harrison, who owned and operated a dress shop, Harrison & Co., in the second floor of the building from 1979 to 1985, during those six years the first floor was used for storage and never for residential purposes.
Regardless, Greene contends that Henderson's interpretation of the law is wrong because it incorrectly defines his apartment as an illegal second unit.
"This is not a second unit. That is a complete misnomer," Greene said. "This is an apartment in a multi-family residential building."
San Anselmo Councilman Jeff Kroot wrote a letter to Town Manager Debra Stutsman and other council members in October 2011 calling for a meeting of the council "to review all illegal construction at 711 Sir Francis Drake Blvd."
"This is an intolerable situation for our community," Kroot wrote. "Steps must be taken to require code compliance at Mayor Greene's property. Council members must be held to the same standards as all other residents of San Anselmo."
Earlier, Greene had been vocal in his criticism of Kroot after Kroot completed a 621-square-foot expansion of his house without submitting the project for design review by the Planning Commission.
Kroot was not required to secure approval for the project, but he would have been had the ceiling in the unfinished ground-floor level of his house been 1 inch higher.
At the time, Greene said council members must adhere to higher standards of conduct than other residents; he added, "that didn't happen here and it should have."
Stutsman said Greene, who was elected to the council in November 2007, did not receive special treatment because he is a council member.
"We treated him the same as we would anyone else," Stutsman said. "We've tried to pursue it as best we can. Our enforcement is complaint driven. There are a lot of code violations around our town."
Contact Richard Halstead via e-mail at rhalstead@marinij.com
council meeting
The San Anselmo Planning Commission meets at 7 p. m. on Monday in Town Hall Council Chambers, 525 San Anselmo Ave.
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