At first it seemed like a rare misstatement from Mike McGuire. At the May event welcoming SMART to Healdsburg—the so-called “groundbreaking”—the local politician and longtime supporter of the commuter rail system said, “Now it’s on to Geyserville!”
The consensus at the time was that he must have meant “Cloverdale,” long the acknowledged last stop in the Sonoma Marin Area Regional Transport network. Perhaps he inadvertently said “Geyserville” because he and his family now live there, instead of in Healdsburg.
Last week revealed it wasn’t a misstatement, but perhaps a stealth announcement: A SMART plan to build a passenger platform in the non-incorporated community of Cloverdale has in fact been in the works for some time.
Even so, it didn’t rise to wider public knowledge until the June 17 SMART board meeting. On that date, the board directed staff to begin a “formal community engagement” process before considering whether a station should move forward.
It was the next formal step in a conversation that began long ago, certainly before Bill Dodd got State Senate approval for SB 904 in 2024, amending SMART’s enabling legislation. Previous stations needed to be within jurisdictions or towns. But SB 904 opened the door to construct a station in unincorporated Sonoma County, between Healdsburg and Cloverdale. Where else but Geyserville?
“We are all pretty excited about the possibility of a Geyserville SMART station,” said John M. Cash, president of the Geyserville Community Foundation. He said that SMART’s general manager, Eddy Cumins, made two presentations recently, one to the Geyserville Planning Committee on Tuesday evening (June 23) and another to the Geyserville/Alexander Valley Municipal Advisory Council on Wednesday evening (June 24).`
Neither City nor Town
As an unincorporated “census designated area,” Geyserville has no city council or other authority, and its Planning Committee and the area MAC are its primary means of advocating with the county.
Nonetheless, the community knows how to advance its interests to action. In 2017 the Planning Committee formed an ad hoc committee to take a survey of residents to gauge their interest and response to a number of issues, which resulted in a firm 97% positive rating on the village identity: “The desire to retain Geyserville’s small-town, rural, agricultural feel while simultaneously building a much more active, lively downtown core.” It’s a statement many Geyservillians have memorized.
A question about adding a SMART stop in town gained almost unanimous response, split 106 in favor, 40 against. Among the ad hoc committee’s conclusions, “We also suggest that the Committee look for synergies with other existing or planned County projects that affect the Geyserville community.”
A SMART Solution
For SMART, a Geyserville station is a ready solution to a looming problem: mustering funds for the final 16-mile drive to Cloverdale, one of the longest stretches on SMART’s 70-mile route. Some think it will be easier to raise funds in smaller chunks rather than the whole 16 miles at once.
The passenger rail service’s stated goals include “connecting SMART passengers with jobs, education centers, retail hubs and housing along the Sonoma-Marin corridor, and a bicycle-pedestrian pathway.” The current functioning segment from Larkspur to Windsor is 48 miles; the extension to Healdsburg brings it to 54. That means another 16 miles of rail (and pathway) remains for SMART to build out the full distance.
Geyserville lies about eight miles between either city, roughly bisecting that gap. SMART’s presentation on the new station at the June 17 board meeting expressly endorsed “strategic segmentation”; adding a Geyserville stop to “segment the delivery” of the complete system.
Bryce Jones, an affable, talkative man, is the president of the Geyserville Planning Committee. He recalls meeting Eddy Cumins on the new general manager’s first visit to the county in 2021. Jones said Cumins asked Jones to tell him what people weren’t telling him. “Well for sure you’re gonna get sued if you don’t do something in the north part of the county,” Jones recalls saying. “We’ve been paying taxes for like almost two decades, and they want a bike path or something.”
The issue of paying taxes is a sensitive one, since SMART just gained a 30-year extension on the quarter-cent sales tax that funds operating costs. Interestingly, no mention was made whatsoever of a proposed Geyserville station until after the easy passage of Prop B.
Under the radar, plans were moving ahead to add Geyserville as a stop midway between Cloverdale and Healdsburg, with the momentum coming as much from Geyserville as from SMART planners.
“It obviously has been something people have been talking about for quite a long time,” Jones said. Attendance at the recent meetings was strong, and questions many. “One lady made a comment that it would seem awfully unfair for a train to come through a community and have the negative impacts from it and none of the positive impacts.”
SMART will host a community meeting on Monday, Aug. 10, from 5:30-7:30pm at the Geyserville Oriental Community Hall. For details see sonomamarintrain.org/geyserville.
