Measure CC would put a 14-cent-per-square-foot parcel tax on improved building area in the Marin Healthcare District for 30 years — about $12.4 million a year, roughly $372 million over the term — on top of hospital bond debt Marin property owners have carried since the $394 million 2013 obligation.
Marin IJ reporting on the hospital’s seismic deadline centers on Redwood Pavilion: 63 patient beds and clinical support space that, under state seismic rules, is not usable for inpatient acute care after January 1, 2030 unless repaired or replaced. That is a real facilities problem. It is not automatically a case for a 30-year open-ended levy whose ballot language also funds expansion, recruitment, and “other medical facilities.”
“There is no other way to fund it.” — Yes-side speaker · Marin IJ (Halstead), Sep 26, 2026
If there is truly no other way, then the ask should be sized to the need the public was told about — seismic compliance for the flagged building — with a price, a timeline, and cost controls. Voters already funded a major hospital campus rebuild in 2013. A second multi-decade tax that reads like a capital wishlist is not the same thing as “keeping the ER open.”
Emergency and trauma in the pitch — not in the seismic flag
Yes on CC marketing sells protecting the trauma center and keeping emergency care “close to home.” MarinHealth’s own emergency-care page says the Emergency Department and Trauma Center are located in Oak Pavilion — the 2020 hospital replacement building — not in Redwood Pavilion. HCAI open data rates Oak Pavilion SPC 5 / NPC 4; Redwood is SPC 2 / NPC 2, and district board minutes say Redwood is “not feasible to retrofit,” with plans to move critical services out of it.
What voters already know in dollars
Even a Yes supporter, in the same IJ piece, said there should be a backup plan if Measure CC is not enough for the hospital’s finances. That is an admission the ballot ask is not a sealed, fully sized fix — yet voters are asked to lock in three decades of square-footage tax with no senior exemption and spending language that reaches well beyond “replace Redwood.”
The FairPAC frame
- Not: “Build whatever you want for 30 years.”
- Yes: Protect real emergency capacity with a narrow, priced ask.
- Not: Brand emergency care as the crisis when the clock is on a specific pavilion.
- Yes: Come back next year with scope, cost, timeline, and controls — only what’s needed.
