Marin County supervisors on Tuesday made it official, voting unanimously to rescind a resolution authorizing the county’s purchase of the San Geronimo Golf Course, but both proponents and opponents of the purchase are requesting that supervisors continue to be involved with the property.

“I urge you to stay involved; help find a compromise. Keep the golf course going for now,” said Amelia “Niz” Brown, one of the leaders of San Geronimo Advocates, whose lawsuit caused the county to nix the purchase.

While Eric Morey, vice chairman of the San Geronimo Valley Planning Group, said, “Please do not give up on the purchase of this property. Let’s not be sorry we let this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity get away.”

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Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, who championed the purchase, said, “Sadly, we must honor the court’s decision today and rescind and vacate this agreement and accept that the management agreement also ends with Touchstone on Dec. 31.”

The Board of Supervisors approved a two-year management contract with Touchstone Golf in March, and the golf course reopened in April. The plan was to allow golf to continue to be played there while community meetings were held to determine the final plan for the property’s future use.

Rodoni also said, “Trust for Public Land (TPL) as with any private land owner will have much more flexibility and choices in meeting their stated goals and objectives for the property.”

The supervisor added that although he is disappointed Marin residents will now miss the opportunity to engage in a planning process for the property, he would work with TPL, as he would with any landowner in his district, to help it meet its desired outcomes “within current zoning.”

Trust for Public Land bought the property from the Lee Family Trust at the end of 2017 at the urging of the county to keep the golf course from being purchased by a private entity.

The county contracted to purchase the golf course from TPL for $8.85 million by December 2018, or December 2019 at the latest if escrow were extended.

But San Geronimo Advocates, a group of San Geronimo Valley residents, successfully filed suit blocking the purchase until proposed changes at the site had received environmental analysis as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The delay made it impossible for the county to secure millions of dollars in state grant money to help pay for the purchase.

“I’m sorry that a small vocal group brought a lawsuit that may cause you to stop the purchase of the property,” Morey said. “It really makes no sense to require an environmental impact report to prove that your efforts to improve our environment, including daylighting a long-buried creek, don’t damage the environment.”

Jean Berensmeier, founder of the San Geronimo Valley Planning Group, said, “The plan would have restored Larsen Creek to its historical use as home of migrating salmon all the way to its headwaters in Roy’s Redwoods.”

Laura Charitan, speaking on behalf of the Sierra Club Marin Group and the Watershed Alliance of Marin, said, “We urge the board to work with the community and to do everything they can to restore this property.”

Members of San Geronimo Advocates and others interested in seeing the golf course remain open are happy the county has dropped its plan to turn the property into a park. They’re worried now, however, about TPL’s plans for the property. Without the county’s subsidization, the golf course will close at year’s end.

“You engaged TPL in this mess and are now dumping our beloved course on TPL,” Brown said.

Brown and others suggested that if TPL has to sell the property for less than it paid that it might try to recoup its loss from the county.

“Your liability is not over,” said Kathleen Robertson of San Geronimo. “I do not see an out in this purchase/sale agreement that gives you a hall pass.”

Brendan Moriarty, a TPL project manager, declined Tuesday to say if that is a possibility or what TPL’s plans are. Moriarty has previously said, however, that TPL is not in a position to extend the county’s subsidized management of the golf course.

The golf course has lost $127,000 to date and the county expects another $59,000 in losses by the end of this year.

David Minnick of Kentfield asserted Monday that the golf course could be producing an additional $14,000 per month in revenue if Touchstone weren’t prohibited from allowing play after noon on Sundays.

Max Korten, director of Marin County Parks, said it is difficult to predict what the additional revenue would amount to. He said it was Touchstone that selected Sunday afternoons when the county asked it to allot a segment of time for non-golf activities.

Brown and others advocating for the county to continue its subsidization of the golf course said that the property will need to be maintained if TPL hopes to sell it.

“If you ‘restore’ it and start growing weeds out there, no one is going to buy the golf course,” said Vincent Marsella of San Anselmo.

Joe Walsh said it is possible to continue allowing golf on the property while preserving and enhancing salmon habitat, providing space for a new fire station, extending an existing community garden and providing additional workforce housing.

“It won’t be easy and it will require collaboration and compromise by all,” Walsh said, “but it can be done.”

Brown and others have already collected 12,000 signatures on a petition to require the property’s continued use as a golf course. The petition organizers have until Jan. 9, 2019 to gather the 8,790 valid signatures necessary to qualify the petition for the ballot.

If they succeed, the Board of Supervisors will have to either implement the action dictated by the initiative or place it on the ballot during the next statewide election in March 2020.