Wine and Water Watch Team

Community Separators: Ask the voters not the supervisors

Communities that have voter approved community separators have very few abuses if the provision that any building in the community separators must go to the voters was included in the initiative and takes the discretionary powers of our supervisors to override away. Napa is one such county and has virtually stopped all bad projects in community separators.

Come on Sonoma County supervisors and planners, the voters said NO loud and clear. 81% of your constituents already ruled on this.   

 

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/opinion/7409914-181/tuesdays-letters-to-the-editor

Ask the voters

EDITOR: The lovely story about Cloverleaf Ranch by Chris Smith shows us what is at risk in Sonoma County (“Cloverleaf Ranch a family affair for 70 years,” Monday). I’d call it real Sonoma County. The luxury resort and event center proposed next door at Buzzard’s Gulch is the opposite. Here, a Marin County developer is proposing to build 25 new lodging units, a 7,000 square-foot event hall, a 2,500 square-foot office building, a commercial kitchen, a pool and water slide, a road and a large parking lot on Old Redwood Highway at Round Barn Road. The plan is to operate 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, with hundreds of weddings and thousands of visitors coming and going.

Worse, the luxury event center is in a community separator and adjacent to the Santa Rosa urban growth boundary — both voter protected smart growth policies. Last year, Sonoma County voted by 81 percent to protect community separators from more intense development. The luxury resort will put community separators to the test. Here and across the county, will we stand up for the few green spaces left between our towns and cities including Cloverleaf Ranch? Or give in to more high end sprawl all around? Per Measure K, let’s ask the voters.

TERI SHORE

Greenbelt Alliance

 https://www.facebook.com/communityseparators/