Archives for August 2019

Lagunitas tea purveyor reports progress in county settlement talks

August 29, 2019 by 1 Comment

By Anna Guth | POINT REYES LIGHT

Settlement discussions are underway between Marin County and David Lee Hoffman, the Lagunitas resident who faces mounting fines in his fight to preserve dozens of unpermitted structures on his property. At a hearing last Friday, both parties reported to Marin County Superior Court Judge Paul Haakenson that their negotiations over the past three months had been productive, though they have yet to reach an agreement. The court will reconvene in 90 days to hear their progress.

Paul Seaton, a San Rafael attorney who is serving as the executive director for the Lagunitas Project, updated Judge Haakenson on Friday that the group has more than $90,000 in promised donations. Mr. Seaton is working with the receiver—who has been in control of Mr. Hoffman’s property since 2015—and county counsel Brian Case to determine how to best bring the 36 structures and other features on the property into compliance with county code.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hoffman, who dismissed his lawyers earlier this year to take matters into his own hands, has been tackling the financial aspect of the settlement with Mr. Case. Transferring ownership of the property to the nonprofit will be a part of the settlement. Thanks to Mr. Seaton’s advocacy, the Marin chapter of the Sierra Club penned a letter to the judge this month in support of preserving the property, which it wrote was a model of sustainability.

Mr. Hoffman and his many supporters have long advocated for the county to apply a more lenient code, the California Historic Building Code, to the property, which they argue has architectural and historical significance. The Sierra Club’s letter favored the application of this code; doing so could involve the reinstatement of the Marin County Architectural Commission’s deci-sion from 2016 that the site is historically important. (The status of that designation is under dispute.)

“While the land use of the Last Resort property is unconventional, we acknowledge that unconventional approaches will be needed in order to over-come the global environmental challenges facing humanity,” wrote Judy Schriebman, chair of the Marin Group Sierra Club. “Under normal circumstances, the Sierra Club would be inclined to challenge property use that involved over-building. In this case, whatever its origins, we now feel there are vitally important overriding considerations in favor of preservation.”

Ms. Schriebman described the two overriding considerations, including that Mr. Hoffman has demonstrated a “nearly closed-loop cycle for waste treatment and food production, on a very small property. This is an extraordinarily powerful and unique working example of sustainability.” Second, Mr. Hoffman has treated the property “as a community resource, opening [it] to tours by international land-use designers, individuals interested in small-scale sustainable land use, and even local school field trips, as well as offering a meeting space.”

Judge Haakenson acknowledged the letter on Friday and emphasized that he has not taken the many opportunities that have come before him to order the property to be demolished. Mr. Hoffman, who now is well accustomed to speaking on his own in court despite his trouble hearing, raised an issue concerning a mysterious fee charged by the Bank of America during his settlement discussions. Judge Haakenson, speaking to a Bank of America representative who phoned in to the hearing, more or less resolved the issue, which proved to be a previous fine rather than a new penalty. The judge encouraged Mr. Hoffman to stay positive. “Step away from the ledge and do not put a damper on the negotiations,” the judge advised. “Your highest and best hope is to negotiate. and to bring the property in compliance with the law.”

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Sierra Club Letter of Support

August 22, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Aug. 21, 2019

Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, Marin County Board of Supervisors
Judge Paul Haakenson, Marin County Superior Court

RE: The Last Resort/The Lagunitas Project

Dear Supervisor Rodoni and Judge Haakenson:

The Marin Group Sierra Club, representing 6600 members in Marin County, supports the reinstatement of the Marin County Architectural Commission resolution that all 36 structures on the 2-acre property of David Lee Hoffman in Lagunitas constitute a cultural and historic landmark of local importance.

The work of David Lee Hoffman’s architectural, ecological vision, The Last Resort, stands as a living model of what we can and should be doing in order to live in a truly sustainable way on the earth. As a representation of the “Back to the Land” movement of the 60’s, it is an outstanding example of regenerative design, and in line with directions that communities are calling for in efforts such as Project Drawdown Marin.

In the spirit of “waste is not waste until it’s wasted”, The Last Resort is an environmental model of sustainable and harmonious living. It attempts to assimilate both natural methods from the past with modern know-how to create a living system that effectively demonstrates possibilities of thriving in a non-polluting healthy environment. Its mission is to discover and perfect practical low-cost sustainable methods for waste management, water re-use, and food security. To this end, a unique integrated bio-management system has been successfully developed.

While the land use of The Last Resort property is unconventional, we acknowledge that unconventional approaches will be needed, in order to overcome the global environmental challenges facing humanity.

Under normal circumstances, the Sierra Club would be inclined to challenge property use that involved over-building. In this case, whatever its origins, we now feel that there are vitally important overriding considerations in favor of preservation.

In the case of The Last Resort property, we feel that there are two main overriding considerations in favor of preservation:

1. On The Last Resort property, Mr. Hoffman has demonstrated a nearly closed-loop cycle for waste treatment and food production, on a very small property. This is anextraordinarily powerful and unique working example of sustainability, from which, we believe, many individuals and land-use designers can learn, to the benefit of humanity.

2. Mr. Hoffman has freely treated the property as a community resource, opening the property to tours by international land-use designers, individuals interested in small scale sustainable land-use, and even local school field trips, as well as offering a meeting space. This is precisely how we feel the sustainability aspect of this property should be regarded – as a living, working model that attempts to demonstrate possibilities for small-scale, closed-loop sustainable living – one that shares its efforts and lessons learned with others, while remaining a real-world residence.

We are very grateful for your recent efforts to reach a compromise that preserves this property as a historic landmark. As the process of working with Mr. Hoffman progresses, we also express the imperative to reinstate Marin County’s own Architectural Commission’s ruling that David’s site is historically important. This would allow the use of the California Historic Building Code asa guideline and protections this code offers. Reinstating the Commission’s ruling is ethical and allows for long-awaited progress in complying with reasonable code  upgrades and an ultimate resolution.

We feel that Mr. Hoffman is a visionary who has pioneered solutions to climate change. These solutions lie in the very structures and systems that would be destroyed if the Commission’s unanimous ruling continues to be discounted or ignored. We believe the demolition of thiswork would be a black mark on the face of Marin County, and a significant lost opportunity to protect and preserve this unique site and its historical import, past and  future. We do not want to lose The Last Resort.

We request that Marin County, through their receiver, reinstate their own Commission’s unanimous ruling, which declared that David’s property deserves local historic status. The reinstatement of the County Architectural Commission ruling would be the final step in bringing closure to the issue of preserving as much of The Last Resort site as possible without interfering with the work of the receiver.

We believe that if Mr. Hoffman loses The Last Resort, we all lose — and we believe that the solution is outlined by the steps presented to you by The Lagunitas Project.

We are truly thankful to have you addressing these issues.

Sincerely,
Judy Schriebman, Chair, Marin Group Sierra Club

MARIN COUNTY GROUP
Protecting the Marin environment since 1968, scmaringroup@gmail.com
2530 San Pablo Ave., Suite I, Berkeley, CA 94702 sierraclub.org/san-francisco-bay/marin

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OPINION Marin Voice: Commercial developers are threatening Lagunitas’ Last Resort

August 20, 2019 by Leave a Comment

David Lee Hoffman pours cups of tea he brewed for visitors over an open fire on Wednesday, July 18, 2012, in Lagunitas. He has been building exotic, Tibetan and Chinese inspired structures on his Lagunitas land for 40 years without permits from Marin County. He now faces $460,000 in fines and a court order to tear everything down. (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)

 

By MARI SEREBROV | August 19, 2019 at 10:33 am

An outgrowth of the back-to-the-earth movement of the 1960s and early ‘70s, the Last Resort in Lagunitas is a testament to one man’s ingenuity and his dream of developing a practical, low-cost ecological system that could serve as a demonstration project for his community.

Now, nearly 50 years after David Lee Hoffman began turning his two acres of hillside into an artistic environmental model of living sustainably, Marin County officials are threatening to destroy everything he’s created by reneging on old agreements and assessing penalties approaching $1 million. That includes hundreds of thousands of dollars to mitigate off-site environmental damage that has nothing to do with the Last Resort.

What could be lost, if the county doesn’t back down in court later this month, is a unique integrated bio-management system that uses vermiculture, composting and healthy gray water processes to produce a natural fertilizer that enriches the soil for growing high-grade organic food. Also at stake are more than 35 buildings that the Marin County Architectural Commission has cited for their architectural significance.

So what is the Last Resort?

“It’s an important and significant example of East-West folk art,” according to sustainable architect Sim Van der Ryn, who was appointed California State Architect by former governor Jerry Brown and is on the architecture faculty at the University of California at Berkeley.

Others consider it a quintessential living history – a prime example of the do-it-yourself, back-to-the-land, Mother Earth ethos of the 1960s put into practice.

For Hoffman, the Last Resort is his home. It embodies three principles: water is precious, soil is sacred and human waste is a resource. Following those principles, Hoffman, who has an engineering and physics background, designed all the systems at the Last Resort to be completely isolated and self-contained so there is no chance of polluting the environment.

Considered a leading global authority on pu-erh teas, Hoffman is known in the tea world for introducing and popularizing fine handcrafted artisanal teas to the West. With his extensive background in vermiculture and soil fertility, Hoffman worked with China’s prestigious National Tea Research Institute, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Department of Agriculture to help them implement organic and sustainable tea-farming practices.

Hoffman has argued that the buildings, including the original house that was built in the 1920s, should be held to the historical building code. He admits that as he developed his compound, he didn’t bother with building permits. Back in the 1970s, no one in that part of the county did. “We were pretty much left alone,” Hoffman said. Even when the county started handing him red tags years later for not having a permit, there was a tacit agreement that everything was OK.

That all changed about 10 years ago when a new generation of building inspectors came into county government. The county initially agreed to settle the permit violations for $60,000 but then reneged on that offer, Hoffman said. Its latest settlement offer was $700,000 in penalties.

The costs escalated when a judge appointed a receiver to determine the property needs. With Hoffman expected to pay for the receiver’s time and all expenses, the receiver has called in multiple experts and agencies to identify violations that “could” be occurring at the Last Resort. Hoffman’s struggle to preserve his vision “got more complex and more convoluted with all these agencies,” he said.

Hoping to pass the ecological lessons he’s learned to future generations, Hoffman is working with the Lagunitas Project to preserve the Last Resort property in a Public Benefit Trust.

“I set out 46 years ago to create a living model of sustainability. I succeeded,” Hoffman said.

Meanwhile, commercial developers are circling.

The public is welcome to attend the case management conference in Marin Superiour Court at the Civic Center in San Rafael, 9 a.m. on Friday. Go to TheLagunitasProject.org for more information.

Mari Serebrov, who lives in Arkansas, is an award-winning journalist and author. She originally wrote this article for TheLagunitasProject.org.

 

Marin Voice: Commercial developers are threatening Lagunitas’ Last Resort

I Stand With The Last Resort

August 20, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Dear Supervisor Rodoni and Judge Haakenson,

We immensely appreciate your recent efforts to, at long last, reach a compromise that preserves The Last Resort, David Lee Hoffman’s property, as a historic landmark. As the process of working with David progresses, we must express the imperative to reinstate Marin County’s own Architectural Commission’s ruling that David’s site is historically important. This would allow the use of the California Historic Building Code as a guideline and protections this code offers. Reinstating the Commission’s ruling is ethical and allows for long-awaited progress in complying with reasonable code upgrades and an ultimate resolution.

This is a work of art, as well as a vision of sustainable architecture and living. It exemplifies principles of the Green New Deal and the 60’s Back to the Land movement, bridging the decades with thoughtful, truly intelligent ecological design.

We do not want to lose The Last Resort, nor do we want to lose David  as a friend, neighbor, and contributor to our community.

We feel that David is a visionary who, during the past 40 years, has created solutions to climate change issues that we face as a global community. These solutions lie in the very structures and systems that stand to be destroyed if the Commission’s unanimous ruling continues to be discounted or ignored. We believe the demolition of his work would severely endanger the health, safety, beauty and tranquility of Marin County – and the potential for large-scale solutions that David’s innovation provides.

We request that Marin County, through their receiver, reinstate their own Commission’s unanimous ruling, which declared that David’s property deserves local historic status. You, too, recently stated in your January 31, 2017 letter to the appointed receiver, “Furthermore, please consider this an official request from my office to include architectural and cultural value determinations on the Hoffman property in your final recommendations.”  The reinstatement of the County Architectural Commission ruling would be the final step in bringing closure to the issue of preserving as much of David’s site as possible without interfering with the work of the receiver.

We believe that if David loses, we all lose — and we believe the solution is outlined by the steps in this petition.

We are truly thankful to have you addressing these issues.

We support the reinstatement of the Marin County Architectural Commission resolution that all 36 structures on the 2-acre property of David Lee Hoffman in Lagunitas constitute a cultural and historic landmark of local importance.

Sincerely,

Judy S.
San Rafael, CA 94903