Our Council searched long and hard to find our accomplished Town Manager, Heather Abrams, after Garrett Toy left for another position. We brought in Adam Politzer as Interim while searching.

Similarly, having no Public Works Director when I came on Council, we found first an interim Jonathon Goldman and now Loren Umbertis, both of whom show what opportunities can be taken by having this position filled.

The Town lost our Planning Director at the beginning of 2023 and, while completing the Housing Element, Jeff Beiswinger was recruited.

With the retirement of our beloved Town Clerk Michele Gardner, Christine Foster has ably taken over those important duties. We have also added a Housing Specialist and a Climate Coordinator (shared with San Anselmo), and hired a replacement for a Public Works staff member we lost.

We enthusiastically welcomed Rico Tabaranza as our new Chief of Police after former Chief Chris Morin retired.

While we honor and thank our former "lean and tiny" staff, having fresh energy is vital to providing services and moving forward with road repair and other improvements. Please treat these hard working people with kindness.

The year 2023 was a difficult one, as the Housing Element needed to be developed, accommodating the State's new requirement that we zone for 490 living units, most of them affordable to our workers. Despite losing our Planning Director early in this process, and needing to change the consulting firm that helped fill this gap, we got it done and certified by the state.

An appeal was lodged against the 490-unit ABAG requirement, but like other jurisdictions, ours was not granted.

While there was concern that a "Builder's Remedy" application could come in before certification, that did not happen. Had we not been certified the Town would have lost major funding and local control.

My thanks to my colleagues Barbara Coler and Chance Cutrano, the subcommittee who did so much of the detail work on the Housing Element.

As everyone must have heard by now, the greatest long-term goal of our Open Space Committee is being achieved: the 100-acre "Wall Property" will be preserved in perpetuity as open space!

Enormous credit goes to Mayor Coler and Councilmember Cutrano for their detailed oversight, and all of our Council and Staff as we made the decisions to proceed with this huge action; to Marin Open Space Trust; the Board of Supervisors; and to the many individuals and the Coastal Conservancy who generously donated to make this happen.

Enjoy and please care for this beautiful land overlooking our downtown!

Fairfax has a long-standing policy of maintaining a reserve of 25% of our annual operating expenses, and has during my time on Council always maintained a reserve even greater than that policy.

Our major expenses are essentially fixed: Fire and paramedic protection, our Police Department with 24/7 dispatch and an open window, and staff salaries. Our pension obligations are well under control -- there is no "time bomb" as some jurisdictions even in Marin have experienced. We improved the town within budget even through the COVID pandemic.

All this may sound wonky, and indeed our budget is a long and detailed document (kept by our Finance Department directed by Micheal Vivrette), but it is central to our Town's vitality and even survival -- and is in solid shape.

A bond, issued with voter approval 20 years ago, is almost paid off (and I worked on the Finance Committee to refinance it to gain enormous savings). That bond paid for capital improvements that we now take for granted, and it is time for another bond to complete much-needed road improvements: Please vote for Measure J for our streets!

The small items that are so readily argued about are just that -- small things, compared to our $13 million budget. Fairfax is on fiscally solid ground.

I have led with a vision to upgrade the Pavilion to serve as a basic Resilience Center for the community when needed. This vision extends to also keeping the Public Works yard, the Women’s Center, and electric vehicle chargers (which currently don't have even generator backup), all operating during outages. This project, for which we will seek outside funding, will much more effectively utilize the large solar array installed in 2009, saving the Town money and offering tours to demonstrate what can be done in people’s homes (including powering your home from an Electric Vehicle during outages).

Our town's legal counsel Janet Coleson has been invaluable in so many things, including crafting ordinances, working very hard on the Housing Element and the Wall Property acquisition, and yes, representing our town in legal issues. While much of Janet's work is not publicly visible, the outcome for our town has been that we have faced NO successful suits (e.g. those brought by red-tagged builders) and we are recovering costs from certain events.

Janet showed her dedication to Fairfax (and other jurisdictions she works with) by avoiding a major increase in her firm's rates by splitting from the firm to continue serving us.

Despite losing her home to wildfire, Janet works tirelessly, in every sense of the word a "counsellor".

For some years the beloved Fairfax-San Anselmo Children's Center, housed in aging buildings in Deer Park, has been tenuously holding on. The Ross Valley School District voted to stop supporting this Center, threatening the end of local and affordable early education for many beautiful kids.

Much was done to, thankfully, save this treasure, and one key part was the Fairfax Council voting to donate toward the effort. While a small item in our budget, this critically demonstrated the support of the town that housed it for keeping the Center operating.