See today's Marin IJ letter to editor from MCBC

MCBC says it's a contractor to SMART. ($20,000 paid
for public outreach.)

Doesn't this raise some independence issues?

This is a 501 c3 organization. They get a bike path from
the sales tax measure but are paid staff
to help support the measure. Are they being
paid to oppose the NCRA proposed guidelines for
pathway clearance?

Here's the letter.******

On behalf of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, I'm writing in response to the IJ's Sept. 24 article about the Board of Supervisors contract with our organization.

MCBC is grateful to work in collaboration with the county of Marin to leverage state and federal government funding and to work on design plans that advance the county's goal of having 20 percent of all trips in Marin County made on foot and on bicycle by the year 2020. This will reduce carbon emissions, improve health and safety and provide alternatives to single-occupancy vehicle trips.

MCBC has helped leverage more than $65 million in state and federal grants in recent years for bikeway projects.

This funding is provided to government agencies like the county for bikeway construction and cannot be used for funding organizations such as MCBC.

Our $40,000 contract with the county serves a unique purpose in that enables our organization to leverage the county's investment exponentially. This is a successful public-private partnership that is achieving mutual goals.

MCBC also wants to clarify that the IJ article incorrectly stated that MCBC has a contract with the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District. Rather, we have a small contract with the North Bay Transportation Alliance to work on the grassroots outreach for the SMART Measure Q campaign, a completely separate entity from the SMART District.

While MCBC supports the SMART project, we have never been on payroll or received any contracted funds from the district.

Kim Baenisch, executive director, Marin County Bicycle Coalition, Fairfax