Measure X FAQ

Measure X is a sweeping, 266-page rewrite of Sausalito's core planning and zoning rules. If approved by a simple majority in November 2026, it immediately becomes law.

Voters are being asked to enact the entire rewrite as written. In a single measure, it:

• Crosses out the Marinship Specific Plan in its entirety across 128 pages of the measure.
• Amends ten chapters of the Municipal Code across 73 pages.
• Amends Sausalito's 450-page General Plan across 57 pages, reaching its introduction and four separate elements.
• Rewrites key provisions of the voter-approved Fair Traffic Limits Initiative, changing zoning decisions throughout Sausalito.

If passed, Measure X would immediately allow 650% more floor area on Industrial land and 900% more on Waterfront land. It would also end voters' final say over future zoning changes in every commercial and industrial area except the Downtown Historic District, transferring those decisions to the City Council.

Measure X was drafted by a small private group outside Sausalito's normal public planning process—without Planning Commission development, community workshops, staff drafting, City Attorney review during preparation, or environmental review. Only after it qualified for the ballot did City staff and independent consultants analyze it. They found conflicts, ambiguities, and gaps the City would have to clean up if Measure X passes.

Sources: Measure X §§3–6 and 9, pp. 2–263 and 265; 2021 Sausalito General Plan; City staff report, pp. 1 and 17–18; Goldfarb/BAE report, pp. 1 and 39–45.

No. Measure X is an all-or-nothing vote: a yes vote enacts the entire 266-page measure.

The ballot does not let voters support Measure X's stated goals while rejecting its much larger buildings, repeal of the Marinship Specific Plan, changes to voter control, or other provisions. They all come as one package.

Measure X is not an advisory vote or an invitation to begin a planning process. A conversation comes before a law. Measure X asks voters to pass the law first.

The City Council may be able to amend portions later, but voters cannot choose those changes on this ballot—and there is no promise that a future Council will remove the provisions they oppose.

Sources: Measure X §§3–12; Goldfarb report, pp. 20–22.

Measure X makes six major changes to development rules, voter control, and the future of the waterfront:

• Takes away the public's vote on future zoning changes in every commercial and industrial area of Sausalito except the Downtown Historic District. A Council majority would make those decisions instead.
• Allows dramatically larger buildings. Measure X permits 650% more floor area on Industrial land and 900% more on Waterfront land. Building coverage rises to 70%, and height can reach 47 feet.
• Authorizes a broad range of new commercial uses, including retail, restaurants, fitness and recreation, and numerous office-type uses listed under other names. Several independently permitted office-type categories are outside the advertised 40% commercial-office cap.
• Repeals the Marinship Specific Plan in its entirety, removing its parcel-specific traffic, shoreline, public-access, working-waterfront, and infrastructure rules.
• Removes existing tools for making development pay toward infrastructure without supplying a replacement funding plan for traffic, drainage, or shoreline protection.
• Makes its program difficult to weaken or undo and lets its proponents continue defending it at City expense if the City declines.

Sources: Measure X §§3–7 and 11–15; City staff report, pp. 3–5 and 7–15; Goldfarb/BAE report, pp. 18–22 and 38–45.

The report's overall conclusion warns that Measure X could increase development beyond current traffic capacity, reduce protections for maritime, industrial, and arts uses, create infrastructure funding challenges, and introduce implementation ambiguities—all while removing voter approval for future zoning changes throughout Sausalito except the Downtown Historic District.

Among the key findings:

• A drafting error could make every existing home and business in Sausalito legally nonconforming, sharply limiting the ability to expand, alter, or rebuild.
• Measure X allows 650–900% more building without a buildout traffic study. No study examined traffic from the 1.8 million square feet BAE found possible on just 12 likely redevelopment sites—or from full buildout under Measure X.
• It repeals shoreline and flood safeguards and the existing rule that makes developers contribute toward infrastructure, while providing no replacement funding mechanism.
• Artists and maritime businesses could be displaced by higher-paying tenants. The legal review found that many office-type uses may occupy 100% of the floor area and are not restricted by Measure X's advertised 40% commercial-office cap.
• It ends a 40-year voter-approval right throughout Sausalito's commercial and industrial areas except the Downtown Historic District—a right voters used as recently as 2025.
• Its protections for the ICB Building and historic Arques Shipyard were called “vague and unenforceable,” and the legal review warned that they could expose the City to a regulatory-takings challenge.

The report identifies possible gains in flexibility, reinvestment, business attraction, and long-term fiscal capacity. But those possibilities come from allowing dramatically more commercial development and letting the City Council approve most future zoning changes without voter approval. The report does not conclude that these possible benefits outweigh the risks it identifies. Nor does it evaluate how much larger commercial buildings, expanded office and distribution uses, and the loss of waterfront protections could affect Sausalito's character, views, and quality of life. More development potential is not the same as a better Sausalito.

Taken together, the reports show Measure X asking voters to authorize vastly more development now, while its traffic, shoreline, financial, and legal consequences remain unresolved.

Sources: City staff report, pp. 3–5 and 9–18; Goldfarb/BAE report, pp. 15–22, 37–40, 45 and 50.

FAR controls how much can be built. Lot coverage controls how much of the ground a building can occupy.

• FAR: total floor area across all stories.
• Lot coverage: how much of the lot the building can cover.
• Height: how tall the building can be.

On a 10,000-square-foot Industrial lot, FAR 0.40 allows up to 4,000 square feet of total floor area. FAR 3.0 allows up to 30,000 square feet.

Sources: Measure X §10.26.040 and Table No. 2, pp. 27–29.

About 11.7 million square feet of legal capacity—more than 10.2 million square feet beyond today's maximum.

Across 95 Industrial and Waterfront parcels, there are approximately 3.90 million square feet of land after water-covered portions are excluded. Applying today's and Measure X's limits to that same land gives:

• Industrial land: approximately 9.01 million square feet total under Measure X—7.81 million more than today.
• Waterfront land: approximately 2.68 million square feet total under Measure X—2.41 million more than today.
• Combined: approximately 11.69 million square feet total—10.22 million more than today.

Water-covered portions of parcels are excluded. This is maximum zoning capacity, not a construction forecast.

The BAE report's separate 1.829-million-square-foot figure considers only 12 selected properties. The report says that figure is neither the maximum theoretical capacity of all parcels nor a forecast of likely construction.

Sources: BAE report, pp. 42–43; City of Sausalito zoning map; Marin County parcel records; parcel-by-parcel calculation applying current and Measure X FAR limits.

Yes. Measure X upzones every Waterfront-zoned parcel from the Spinnaker through central Sausalito to the Marinship—not only the Waterfront parcels inside the Marinship.

That includes the entire group of privately owned parking-lot parcels in front of the Spinnaker Restaurant, followed by a line of Waterfront parcels extending north along the shoreline to the Marinship.

Sausalito's zoning map identifies 21 Waterfront parcels outside the Marinship. Some are partly or entirely water and have little or no land area today, but Measure X upzones all of them. On the existing land portions alone, their combined maximum floor-area capacity would rise from about 40,936 to 409,362 square feet.

Sources: Measure X §10.26.040 and Table No. 2; City of Sausalito zoning map; Marin County parcel records.

No. No study has examined traffic from Measure X's full development capacity—or even from the 1.8 million square feet BAE identified on 12 selected sites.

BAE also says many private Marinship roads likely cannot accommodate significant development.

That gap is larger than it first appears. The traffic from Measure X would be added to housing already planned and newly zoned along Bridgeway. The reports did not study the combined effect. One pending project at 1 and 3 Harbor Drive alone proposes approximately 477,000 square feet and 294 homes.

Bridgeway is already headed toward intolerable delay without Measure X. Measure X authorizes far more commercial capacity before anyone has calculated the combined result.

Sources: BAE report, p. 50; City staff report, pp. 14 and 16–17; 1 & 3 Harbor Drive entitlement plans, sheet G-102.

Yes. Voters are being asked to enact a 266-page measure.

Here is what those pages contain:

• Pages 1–4: title, findings, and changes to voter-approved Ordinance 1022.
• Pages 5–77: changes to the Sausalito Municipal Code.
• Pages 78–206: repeal of the Marinship Specific Plan, with its 128-page body crossed out.
• Pages 207–263: changes to the Sausalito General Plan.
• Pages 264–266: rules for future standards, amendments, competing measures, and legal defense.

Sources: Measure X, complete 266-page text.

The Marinship Specific Plan is the comprehensive framework protecting and guiding Sausalito's working waterfront. Measure X repeals it in its entirety.

The 1989 plan is much more than a zoning table. It combines land-use rules with environmental safeguards, traffic limits, view and shoreline protections, public access and infrastructure requirements, working-waterfront priorities, and social-benefit and inclusionary provisions.

The plan recognizes that the Marinship's properties are not interchangeable. It divides the area into 11 planning areas and approximately 60 planning parcels, with standards tailored to differences in access, traffic, existing uses, shoreline conditions, geology, flooding, and public value.

Section 5 of Measure X says the plan is “deleted in its entirety.” Its repeal removes most of that integrated framework, including:

• Land-use and working-waterfront protections: parcel-specific rules favoring small-scale, low-traffic arts, maritime, industrial, and waterfront uses rather than treating every property as interchangeable commercial land.
• Environmental safeguards: requirements addressing shoreline setbacks, flooding, subsidence and unstable filled land, geological suitability, drainage, water quality, and pollution.
• Views, open space, and public access: mapped view corridors and the Bridgeway view window, shoreline and open-space setbacks, waterfront paths, bicycle and pedestrian connections, and small-boat tie-up requirements.
• Traffic and infrastructure protections: a system limiting additional development according to the traffic a property generates, plus identified street, intersection, drainage, path, and pier improvements and responsibilities assigned to benefiting properties.
• Social-benefit and inclusionary provisions: rules balancing applied arts with fine, industrial, and marine arts; requiring commercial uses to be accompanied by noncommercial uses; preserving marine-service priorities; and reserving a share of recreational liveaboard berths for people with low and moderate incomes.

Measure X keeps or rewrites a few individual rules, but it repeals the Specific Plan as a whole. For important protections such as view corridors, shoreline setbacks, and public open space, Measure X only says the City may write new standards later. Those replacement protections are not included in Measure X, and the City is not required to adopt them.

Sources: Measure X §§5–7, pp. 78–206; City staff report, pp. 9–10; Goldfarb report, pp. 18–19.

Only after its protections were carried forward into revised zoning.

The 2021 General Plan did contemplate eventually retiring the Specific Plan—but not simply repealing it. It directed the City to:

• Use a public process to incorporate the Specific Plan's land-use policies and development rules into the Zoning Ordinance.
• Carefully evaluate and update its detailed parcel guidance in a clearer, more usable format.
• Carry forward view-corridor protections and consider infrastructure, sea-level rise, subsidence, and liquefaction.
• Retire the Specific Plan only after the revised zoning was adopted.

That work was never completed. Measure X does not carry out that plan—it abandons it. It repeals the Specific Plan immediately, deletes the General Plan programs that called for its protections to be carried forward, and provides no completed replacement.

Sources: 2021 General Plan Programs LU-4.1.1 and LU-4.1.2; Measure X §§5–6, pp. 78–263.

A broad mix of new commercial and office-type activities—including uses that may occupy 100% of a building's permitted floor area.

Measure X replaces the current rules with a 65-category use table for the Industrial and Marinship Waterfront zones. Uses independently permitted by that table are outside the measure's 40% commercial-use limit, subject to any required use permit and use-specific standards.

The expanded range of activities includes:

• Office-type and professional uses: financial institutions and financial-service businesses; medical, dental, and mental-health offices and laboratories; business and office support services; publishers; industrial and marine research and development; and “applied arts,” including architecture, engineering, software design, and graphic design.
• Distribution and delivery uses: wholesaling and distribution operations, parcel-delivery hubs, equipment rental and sales, storage yards, and accessory storage.
• Visitor and consumer uses: restaurants, outdoor dining, catering, ancillary retail, building-material stores, recreation and fitness centers, and auto, vehicle, and parts sales.
• Standalone parking: off-street parking is listed as a principal use, subject to a conditional use permit—not merely as parking accessory to another waterfront business. That could mean a large parking facility or garage built to serve substantially more cars.
• Other uses: vehicle repair, pipelines and transmission lines, vehicle storage, and temporary offices and events.

Many of these are office-type businesses in everything but name. Because they are independently listed in Measure X's use table, they are not governed by its 40% “commercial office” cap. Accessory offices are also separately permitted.

The practical question is not whether Measure X uses the words “office building.” It is whether a large new building can be occupied by banks, clinics, laboratories, publishers, software designers, architects, engineers, research operations, and office-support businesses. Under Measure X, it can.

Sources: Measure X §10.26.030(B), Table 10.26-1 and Chapter 10.88; Goldfarb report, pp. 40 and 45.

No. Measure X repeals existing protections for maritime, industrial, and arts uses.

The independent report's overall conclusion says Measure X could “reduce existing protections for maritime, industrial, and arts uses.” The Marinship Specific Plan gives these uses priority and protects them from some competition with higher-paying commercial tenants through its use restrictions, applied-arts requirements, and working-waterfront rules. Measure X repeals that plan in its entirety.

Measure X then opens the area to a broad range of new commercial tenants—including office-type businesses, logistics and distribution operations, retail, restaurants, fitness, and recreation—while allowing far more floor area. BAE warns that existing arts and maritime-industrial businesses are more price-sensitive—and could be displaced by tenants able to pay more.

City planning staff reports that retail, restaurant, and fitness and recreation businesses are already seeking Marinship locations. That existing demand is why the displacement issue is immediate rather than theoretical: Measure X would let those businesses compete for space now occupied by artists, makers, and maritime trades.

The one site-specific clause presented as a protection bars new uses from displacing existing uses at the ICB Building and historic Arques Shipyard. The independent legal review calls that clause “vague and unenforceable” because the measure does not define or map those sites—and repeals the Specific Plan that does.

Sources: Goldfarb/BAE report, overall conclusion, pp. vi–vii; displacement analysis, p. 38; City staff report, pp. 9–10 and 15.

No—not the way it is being advertised. Many office-type uses fall outside the 40% cap.

Measure X exempts uses independently permitted in its use table and separately allows accessory offices. That leaves many office-type categories outside the cap, including:

• Financial institutions.
• Business and office support services.
• Publishers.
• “Applied arts,” including architecture, engineering, software design, and graphic design.

Even the nominally capped portion grows dramatically because Measure X raises the underlying FAR to 3.0. City staff calculates that accessory commercial capacity rises from roughly 0.15 FAR to 1.2 FAR.

Sources: Measure X §10.26.030(B) and Table 10.26-1; Goldfarb report, pp. 40 and 45; City staff report, p. 14.

In every commercial and industrial area outside the Downtown Historic District.

Measure X does not immediately upzone every commercial district as it does the Industrial and Waterfront zones. It does, however, remove the citywide voter-approval safeguard, allowing a future City Council majority to change zoning, permitted uses, FAR, setbacks, variances, and development agreements without a citywide vote.

Areas affected include Caledonia, Bridgeway, Spring Street, Nevada Street, Coloma, Old Town, and the waterfront. This is not an obsolete protection: Sausalito voters used it as recently as November 2025 to decide Measure J.

Sources: City staff report, pp. 3 and 7; Goldfarb report, pp. 20–22.

Because adopting a voter initiative is exempt from environmental review under CEQA.

A comparable rezoning initiated and adopted by the City would generally undergo environmental review before enactment.

That does not mean environmental review disappears for every later building. Individual projects may still receive project-level review when required. What is missing is a study of the combined effects of this 266-page rezoning before voters are asked to approve it.

Legal sources: California Supreme Court, Tuolumne Jobs & Small Business Alliance v. Superior Court (2014); DeVita v. County of Napa (1995).

No. Measure X does not fix a road, storm drain, or flooded street—and it provides no funding plan.

Measure X does not:

• Dedicate revenue or establish a financing district.
• Calculate the cost of the work it promises.
• Require new development to fund shoreline protection.

Measure X repeals the one existing rule that makes developers pay their share toward infrastructure. That rule requires contributions when developers are allowed to build more, while other Specific Plan requirements assign particular property owners responsibility for street and intersection improvements. Sausalito has no other impact fees for roads, storm drainage, or shoreline protection. Measure X provides no replacement.

BAE says new development should help pay for sea-level-rise mitigation. Measure X does not require it. It deletes existing shoreline and hazard protections, leaving any replacement standards for the City to consider later.

Sources: City staff report, principal developer-contribution tool, p. 4; infrastructure assignments and absence of replacement fees, pp. 14–15; BAE report, pp. 36–37; Goldfarb report, pp. 5–7 and 18–19.

No. No independent report concludes that Measure X would pay for itself or fund shoreline protection.

BAE says the City would “likely” receive some operating-budget benefits from future development, but its analysis is expressly qualitative. It does not forecast how much development would occur, calculate a net fiscal result, or include capital costs.

The costs that were quantified point the other way at the outset. City staff estimates $150,000–$250,000 for a clean-up ordinance, fee study, and General Plan amendments needed to resolve conflicts left by Measure X. Staff also estimates 1.5 to 2 additional employees and a net General Fund cost of approximately $60,000–$90,000 per year during the initial multi-year implementation period.

Sources: BAE report, pp. 2, 29 and 36; City staff report, pp. 4, 12 and 18.

The independent legal review found serious drafting problems, including “several internal inconsistencies.”

The problems include:

• Changing Ordinance 1022 without making matching changes elsewhere in the zoning code.
• Creating uncertainty about how the Waterfront zone is categorized.
• Misstating the current Industrial FAR.
• Leaving unresolved footnotes and conflicting provisions.

Even Measure X's protections for two specific sites may not work. The measure says new uses cannot displace existing uses at the ICB Building or the shipways at the historic Arques Shipyard. But it neither defines nor maps the sites—and repeals the Specific Plan that does. The legal review calls the language “vague and unenforceable.” It also warns that singling out those properties without explanation could expose the City to a regulatory-takings claim if the protected uses later become infeasible.

Sources: Goldfarb report, pp. 4, 13–16 and 39–40; City staff report, pp. 4 and 18.

Yes. The independent legal review found that Measure X would place strict limits on expanding all existing uses in the City—not only those in the Marinship.

Measure X says: “Existing uses as of March 13, 2026 shall be considered Non-conforming Uses and Structures.” Under Sausalito's rules for nonconforming uses:

• Each use remains nonconforming until a conditional use permit is obtained.
• A structure used for a nonconforming use generally cannot be enlarged or structurally altered without changing to a permitted use or obtaining a nonconformity permit.
• A use generally cannot be reinstated after it has been voluntarily vacated for six months.

That six-month rule applies to voluntary vacancy. If a use ceases involuntarily, it may be reinstated within one year. A structure involuntarily destroyed by fire or another casualty may generally be replicated if a building permit is issued within one year; after that, a nonconformity permit may be required.

This is not a harmless typo with a guaranteed first-day fix. If Measure X passes, the sentence becomes voter-enacted law. Narrowing it would have to fit Measure X's limited authority for Council amendments—or go back to the voters—and any attempted correction could be challenged.

Sources: Measure X §§3 and 12; Goldfarb report, pp. 15–16 and 21–22; SMC §§10.62.040(B), 10.62.040(E), 10.62.050(A)(3), and 10.62.070(A)(6).

Only in limited ways. Measure X is written to be difficult to weaken or undo.

• To weaken or repeal it: Section 12(A) requires another vote of the people.
• To advance its purposes: Section 12(B) lets the City Council act without another vote to resolve ambiguities or inconsistencies, or otherwise further Measure X.

The Council must adopt a finding explaining how its change furthers Measure X. Section 13 also directs courts and the City to interpret the measure liberally to carry out its purposes.

Section 11 adds another layer of durability: it tells a court to preserve the rest of Measure X even if individual provisions—down to particular words—are invalidated.

Sources: Measure X §§11–13, p. 265; Goldfarb report, pp. 21–22.

If the City stops defending Measure X, the proponents can take over—and the City can be required to reimburse them.

Section 15 asks the City to defend Measure X. If the City declines or decides not to appeal an adverse ruling, the proponents may step in as “agents of the people” and continue the case themselves.

The City must reimburse the proponents for reasonable expenses and losses, capped at what it would have cost the City to conduct the defense. That means elected City officials could decide that continued litigation is unwise, yet the proponents could keep litigating and send the City the bill within that cap.

This provision gives the proponents an unusual, continuing role after Election Day—and limits the City's practical ability to end or settle litigation over the measure.

Sources: Measure X §15, p. 266.

The City's official election page collects the complete initiative, the City staff report, and the independent consultant report.

• Measure X — complete 266-page text
• Independent Goldfarb/BAE Measure X report
• City of Sausalito staff Measure X report
• City of Sausalito: 2026 election and Measure X documents
• City of Sausalito: Marinship Specific Plan and background documents