After a nearly two-hour hearing, San Rafael planning commissioners this week gave their blessing to a new 89-unit senior care facility in Terra Linda. The commission voted 6-1 Tuesday to grant Windsor-based Oakmont Senior Living a conditional use permit to build the three-story, 83,000-square-foot care center at 3773 Redwood Highway.

Kentfield School District leaders on Tuesday strongly denied that any revenue from Measure A, the district’s parcel tax renewal measure on the March 6 mail-in ballot, would be used to offset rising public pension costs. “Measure A is not about paying for pensions,” Kentfield Superintendent Liz Schott said at a meeting of the Independent Journal editorial board.

A new coalition of more than 25 College of Marin-connected teachers, students, attorneys, community members and science alumni have issued a call for college officials to spend $2 million in bond funds to restore the Bolinas Marine Lab. “Students have to be inspired to want to learn,” said COM life sciences instructor Joe Mueller, a leader in the two-month-old Bolinas Marine Lab Coalition.

When San Rafael officials announced last year they would “let the light in” citywide and save on energy costs by installing 2,700 new LED street lamps, they assumed most residents would welcome the added visibility at night. What they didn’t count on was a brightness so intense that residents say wildlife have fled and sunglasses are required for night walks.

The child-safe white vinyl delivery bags at Nurit Raphael’s work table in Marin are so fashion-forward, they could be cushy makeup cases or travel-sized body lotion carry-alls. But for Raphael, co-owner of ONA.life medical cannabis-infused-products delivery company, the sacks with strong protective clasps are one of many regulatory details she is adhering to as she pursues a potential business license in San Rafael.

The future of a West Marin charter school created as a loving, independent, alternative education for kids is in jeopardy after its authorizing agency pulled the plug, effective Monday. CalSTEAM, which holds the charter for Heartwood Educational Collaborative in Fairfax, is self-revoking its charter under a Sonoma County school district.

The BioMarin pharmaceutical company, which already occupies a sizeable office complex in downtown San Rafael, is poised to expand into the old 3-acre Pacific Gas and Electric Co. property on Third Street. The company, which develops drug therapies for rare genetic disorders, has submitted conceptual design plans to the city for a 62-foot-high office building and separate five-story Whistlestop senior center and housing complex at 999 Third St.

San Rafael may be the next target of a legal challenge demanding the city switch from at-large elections for City Council seats to district elections in order to avoid what the potential challenger calls “racially polarized voting.”. However, city officials say there is no evidence to support a claim of discriminatory elections in San Rafael.

Santa Rosa >> Former Marin resident Ralph Casale was prepared for sadness, grief and despair last weekend when he went back to see what was left of his burned-out home in the Fountaingrove section of Santa Rosa. Instead, what took the general contractor totally by surprise was an eerie mix of relief, exhilaration, honor, fulfillment and even joy.

If there was a time when high school students with disabilities were supposed to stay in the shadows, not talk about their feelings and keep themselves separate from their peers, that time has been ended by San Rafael High School senior Zoe Epstein. A budding broadcast journalist who last year produced a video of her life with Down syndrome for the school’s TV magazine show, “BullDog Broadcast,” Epstein said she is committed to being a voice for young people who might be shy in public because they are different.

After a robust and passionate two-hour hearing, the San Rafael Planning Commission voted unanimously to deny a neighbor’s appeal of a use permit for a proposed brewpub at 1848 Fourth St. The 6-0 vote Tuesday by the commissioners upholds the use permit granted by the city Sept. 13 to Trevor and Stephanie Martens of Pond Farm Brewing Co.

John Busick was on his laptop at a painting contractors’ conference in Chicago about three years ago when a fellow attendee circled around toward him. “That’s what I use to manage my company,” replied Busick, whose family business, Bob Kunst Painting Inc., is based in San Rafael. When Busick showed him how it worked, the other man insisted he present it to the 150 contractors in the room.

For the second time, neighbors of a proposed 200-dog overnight boarding, grooming and day care center in San Rafael are challenging the city’s use permit for the project, planned for a warehouse property at 629 Lindaro St. just south of downtown. “While the (city) staff may be able to argue some degree of compatibility to this usage on the Lindaro Street side, there is certainly no compatibility on Mariposa Road, nor precedent to allow this type of use adjacent to residential housing.”.

Consumer groups and government officials are issuing warnings amid scattered reports of North Bay rental price hikes and allegations of gouging in the aftermath of last week’s devastating wildfires. Tenants Together, a renters’ rights group in San Francisco, warned Wednesday that landlords cannot raise rents by more than 10 percent under a state of emergency declared by Gov.

About 60 Bolinas residents, College of Marin faculty members and science lovers crowded into the Bolinas fire station this week to seek a way to create a mixed-use community and educational facility at the Bolinas marine lab on Bolinas Lagoon. “The message I’m hearing is that we have a broad community that wants to work together on this,” said Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, who moderated Wednesday’s meeting along with College of Marin President David Wain Coon.

After 10 months of owning the Northgate mall in Terra Linda, San Francisco-based Merlone Geier Partners is taking stock — in a public way. The firm, which is exploring ways to transform the mall as a mixed-use, town-hub-style gathering place, has sent thousands of mailers out to homes and businesses surrounding the complex, directing people to an online survey at shopatnorthgate.com.