The hiring of a developer to oversee the estimated $266 million renovation of Marin City’s Golden Gate Village is a promising milestone that this long-needed and long-debated work is going to begin.

Repairing and renovating the 65-year-old complex, which at 296 units makes it the largest public housing apartment complex in the county, has been at the center of a thorny debate and bureaucratic bungling for more than a decade.

Several executive directors of the Marin Housing Authority, which owns and manages the subsidized housing, have come and gone. Several plans have been advanced — and scuttled. Millions have been spent hiring prospective development firms and teams of consultants in failed efforts to move the work forward.

Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters deserves credit for putting the project on a track that finally appears to be headed for construction.

“We’ve never been closer to having this project happen,” says Supervisor Dennis Rodoni.

We hope that the supervisor is right, even with some financial uncertainties resulting from President Donald Trump’s budget cuts.

But Mike Andrews, a federal housing department expert who has been hired by the county, says the administration appears to be supportive of two programs — low-income housing tax credits and tenant protection vouchers — on which the Golden Gate Village project will rely.

He says that if the project receives the funding, construction could start early next year.

Moving forward now to get plans ready for construction is important to meet the state’s deadline for the start of work.

Residents of Golden Gate Village, some with family members that have lived there since the 1960s, need to be involved in that planning. Concerns about protecting the historic architecture of the complex need to be addressed — publicly.

Most of the work is supposed to be interior repairs and improvements, other than new windows and roofs.

Tenants also want to be able to trust the county’s promises that renters in good standing will not be permanently displaced by the work.

The drafting of a memorandum of understanding between the Marin Housing Authority and the Golden Gate Village Residents Council needs to be reached and approved. Moulton-Peters’ hands-on leadership may be needed to keep the focus trained on the construction deadline and getting started on the apartment-by-apartment task.

Transparency, clarity and keeping tenants informed before and after issues are hashed out will be important to maintaining a strong consensus. The time for political power struggles, the kinds that have derailed previous plans, is past.

Now is the time to focus on the residents and the residences.

“Our team remains unwavering in its commitment to this revitalization,” Burbank Housing CEO Larry Florin said in a news release. “Our ongoing collaboration with residents will continue to be a top priority as we move through planning and completion of the improvements.”

This is a top-priority project, a giant civic task with high costs in terms of dollars and, more important, meeting societal needs.

The county’s hiring of Burbank Housing Development Corp., a Santa Rosa-based nonprofit with over 40 years of experience in building and managing affordable housing across the North Bay, should be a strong partnership.