REDWOOD NEEDLES
REDWOOD NEEDLESPresented by the Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Newsletter, The REDWOOD NEEDLES
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Why should Sierra Club members support and work for the passage of the Rural Heritage Initiative (Measure I on the ballot)?
Given the current climate of economic boom, and the creation of thousands of new jobs each year, it is inevitable that developers will covet Sonoma County's agricultural and open spaces. We've seen this pattern in Santa Clara County and throughout the nation. Measure I will protect Sonoma County by requiring public approval for changes to the General Plan that facilitate sprawl on agricultural and resources lands. (Currently, these changes can be approved simply by a majority vote of three out of five Supervisors.)
Opponents of Measure I have claimed that it will harm agriculture. The Farm Bureau has gone so far as to circulate this disinformation to itsmembership. As shown in the County Staff Report and in a report by the State Legislative Analyst, Measure I will not interfere with current or future agricultural operations. A complete point-by-point refutation of the Farm Bureau statements will soon be posted on the ruralheritage.net web site.
Rather than belabor that claim, it is more important to address a second claim that may be of more immediate interest to Sierra Club members. This is the claim that Measure I will somehow impede development of parks.
Measure I affects only County owned parks on land designated for agriculture or "Resources and Rural Development (RRD)". Therefore it has
no effect on the 10,000 acres of State and Federal Parks and Preserves proposed in the Outdoor Recreation Plan. Similarly, the Los Guilucos
Sports Facility within the City of Santa Rosa, and proposed parks in Healdsburg, South Sebastopol, West Petaluma and South Sonoma, totaling 113 acres would not be affected by Measure I if they are owned by those cities. Bodega Bay and Alder Park are already designated for Public and Quasi-Public (PQP) use and would not be affected by Measure I. County staff has already determined that the South Cotati and El Verano parks would also not be affected by Measure I.
Five proposed community and neighborhood parks with locations yet to be designated will not require a public vote if they are sited on land owned by a city, special district, Federal, or State government.
Measure I requires a public vote only for the creation of those parks that are not "restricted primarily to non-intrusive recreational or educational uses such as hiking and nature study" on one of four specific County Land Use designations. In other words, Measure I does not require a public vote for minimally developed parks, but does require a public vote for parks that are primarily highly developed (e.g., tennis courts, softball fields) and in agricultural or RRD areas. Had Measure I already been in place, it would not have required a public vote for more than one of the County's currently existing Regional Parks.
Of the 44 County parks totaling 7,817 acres proposed in the Draft Outdoor Recreation Plan, Measure I would require public authorization for only five, with acreage totaling less than two percent of the total.
Of twelve regional recreation areas proposed, only one might arguably fall outside the definition of being primarily for non-intrusive recreation, (North Sonoma Regional Park). It would not require a vote because it is already designated PQP. Several of the others are only "developed" to the extent that they provide a parking lot or a bathroom.
Creation of trails and bikeways have not required General Plan amendments in the past, and claims that such amendments will suddenly be required in the future are mere anti-Measure I rhetoric rather than actual effect. Measure I specifically exempts those non-intrusive uses from the election requirement.
It's important to remember that the worst case scenario for the effect of Measure I on parks is that a small number of highly developed parks in areas outside of urban centers may require public consent. In general, it's probably not a good idea to put highly developed parks far away from the population centers and the infrastructure of roads and services anyway. Nevertheless, given the tremendous affinity that Sonoma County Voters have for outdoor recreation, such a proposal would probably pass in a heartbeat unless it was utterly without redeeming value. Overall, Measure I promotes parks by directing development towards existing urban areas, and preserving the large undeveloped areas that have the potential to become parks in the future.
The campaign for measure I requires your time as well as your financial support. In the next two months, precinct captains will be contacting their neighbors to introduce them to Measure I. These neighbor-to-neighbor contacts can be very persuasive, and may make the difference between winning and losing this election. Please volunteer in this or some other capacity by calling the Measure I campaign office at 523-4744. Financial contributions should go directly to Citizens for Sonoma County's Future, 404A Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa, 95401.
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