C.M. Council denies SMART $8 million

The Corte Madera Town Council voted against a request to divert $8 million from the Transportation Authority of Marin (TAM) to the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit project (SMART).

With Mayor Alexandra Cock not attending, the council voted 4-0 at its Tuesday meeting.

“The project has never lived up to what it was supposed to be,” Vice Mayor Bob Ravasio said of SMART.

The TAM board is meeting Thursday night in San Rafael to vote on whether or not to hand the money over to SMART.

The project, initially to be funded by a quarter-cent sales tax approved by voters in 2008, was supposed to connect Cloverdale to Larkspur with a commuter train system. Since then, the SMART project has faced ballooning costs, resulting in cutbacks in the train route and bike paths.

Ravasio said SMART was not supposed to seek funding from sources such as TAM and that diverting the money would “impair our local abilities” to pay for transit projects, such as the Tam intersection repairs.

Earlier in the evening, the council denied an appeal stemming from a plan to add a second story to a house on Mohawk Avenue.

Ravasio said some neighbors voiced concerns as it would be the only two-story house on the block, but there are multi-story houses in the encompassing Madera Gardens area.

“We try to be as sensitive as we can,” Ravasio said of construction developments.

At the meeting, nobody spoke against the plan.

The council also approved a rate increase proposed by the Mill Valley Refuse Service for waste and recycling collection.