Marin County supervisors have delayed an appeal hearing on a controversial plan to install stadium lights at Marin Catholic High School.
Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to reschedule the hearing after Chris Roeder, a member of the Marin Catholic board, said the school needs extra time to respond to a late flurry of opposition material.
“The day before the hearing, a neighbor opposing the field lights submitted nearly 100 pages of commentary in a last-minute effort to create confusion,” Roeder said.
The school’s “team of subject matter experts required a few additional days to address these claims thoroughly,” Roeder said.
Supervisors agreed to continue the hearing to Dec. 17.
At issue is Marin Catholic’s application to install four 80-foot field lights at its stadium off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Kentfield.
About 85% of the school’s 719 students play on athletic teams, the school has said. Because of the increase in students enrolling in athletics, the school says it has run out of room in the waning daylight hours of fall and winter for all the athletes who need to practice and play games.
Opponents in the surrounding Greenbrae and Kentfield hills say night games and practices could worsen the noise and glare problems at their homes. They are demanding that the school be ordered to do an environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Marin Catholic is appealing an Oct. 9 decision by the county Planning Commission to deny the school an exemption to CEQA. The school has technical reports from consultants that indicate little to no significant environmental impact.
Despite a concurrence by the county’s environmental planning coordinator, a 4-3 majority of planning commissioners said they didn’t have enough specific information from the school on schedules and use of the lights to grant the exemption.
Commissioners did not address the merits of the application or the technical reports in the decision.
In a report for the hearing Tuesday, the Marin County Community Development Agency recommended that the Board of Supervisors deny the school’s appeal.
However, a separate memo from county planner Easton Ehlers said the school has now submitted “clarifying project information” that could change that recommendation. The memo was filed after the meeting agenda was posted.
The memo outlined the school’s plan: “The lighting system would be used a total of 135 calendar days in any given calendar year according to the following schedule: 45 days for lighted practices ending at 7:15 p.m.; 25 days for lighted practices ending at 9:15 p.m.; 55 days for lighted games ending at 8:15 p.m.; and 10 days for lighted games ending at 9:30 p.m. The field lighting system would not be operated on Sundays.”
The memo also said the school will prohibit music during sports practices.
Roeder said the light plan is part of the school’s “good neighbor program,” which includes information on how the school plans to be transparent with residents and responsive to community concerns.
He said the program “is important because it simplifies the proposed usage of the lights.”
“While our usage plan has been in our application since day one, it’s now included as a part of our project description with the county to ensure complete accountability,” he said.
Public response to the plan has been sharply divided for years. An earlier plan in 2016 was withdrawn amid strong opposition by the public and at the county level. Since the school submitted a revised application in May, the project has generated hundreds of comments in person and in letters.
Nearly 500 pages of public comment were submitted to the county for Tuesday’s hearing, including letters from neighbors, parents and other residents. Some were from members of Preserve Ross Valley, a group formed to oppose the lights.
“I would be greatly impacted by the lights and noise of the stadium,” wrote Jackie Barnick, a 45-year resident of Spyglass Hill, a condominium complex in Greenbrae. “When it is very hot out, it would be impossible to have the windows open. Marin General Hospital put in some strong lights, and they shine into my window already.”
Casey McGovern, a Marin Catholic parent, said he “strongly” supports the lights.
“Field space is very limited in Marin County,” McGovern wrote. “This would allow more high school students more access to much-needed field time.”
More than 400 pages of the comments were submitted after the meeting agenda was posted. The comments, some from attorneys and technical experts, comprise the last-minute documents the school needed the extra time to process, Roeder said.
Brendan Fogarty of Greenbrae, one of several people who commented at the abbreviated proceeding Tuesday, said the lights project is “not a minor issue” and “not just an accessory building” that should be exempt from CEQA.
“We just want to have the quiet use of our Ross Valley homes,” said Fogarty, vice president of Preserve Ross Valley. “Their ‘good neighbor program’ is useless.”
Jonathan Hirsch, a Redwood High School graduate and coach of the school’s freshman football team, said Marin’s youths are deprived of healthy social activities such as Friday night football games. Instead, some turn to drinking alcohol or taking drugs because they have nothing to do to meet their social needs or to ease mental health issues.
Having the home football games on Friday nights would give students an outlet to have fun and be part of a community, he said.
“This is harm reduction,” he said.
