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The Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) board has reached a unanimous agreement with interim Executive Director Farhad Mansourian to become the agency’s new permanent general manager.

Mansourian has worked for the county for 31 years, most recently as the head of the Department of Public Works. He also managed the Marin County Transit Agency for 12 years and served as executive director of Marin County’s Congestion Management Agency for 14 years. In addition, Mansourian was a key figure in the 2008 effort to pass Measure A, a quarter-cent sales tax approved to fund SMART service.

“We believe that SMART’s next steps, especially in the near term, require not only deep transportation and public project experience, which Farhad has, but that the taxpayers will be best served and project success will be maximized with someone at the helm who is already intimately familiar with our local, regional and state agency and regulatory environments,” SMART Chairwoman Valerie Brown said in a prepared statement.

SMART aims to build a 70-mile commuter-rail line between California’s Marin and Sonoma counties.

Mansourian plans to ensure that, despite the recession, voters in the counties “get the world-class rail project that they approved in 2008,” he said.