Precedent Setting Rezoning Being Challenged
PRSC: Greetings All,
It’s been a while since We’ve been in touch and we wanted to bring you up to date on some news.
Sonoma County Tomorrow, Inc, the fiscal sponsor of PRSC, SAFER, Wine Water Watch and Friends of SMART, and the non profit that Warren Watkins handed to us to manage last year, is now a co-plaintiff suing the County of Sonoma re: the Sonoma Developmental Center plan.
We are joining SCALE, a new coalition from the Sonoma Valley/Glen Ellen area, made up of several of their community groups that have been working on the SDC issue for many years.
Scaledownsdc.org is their new website. (You can see yesterday’s PD article about the lawsuit in the Media section of the site.)
Because of the precedent-setting nature of this project, we decided the implications were far reaching for land use in the county and decided to move forward as a co-plaintiff.
Rezoning the SDC area into a special district creates a dangerous precedent by making other rural areas vulnerable to rezoning into special districts at the whims of the Board of Supervisors.
This precedent would erase the stated goal of Sonoma County jurisdictions which have enacted multiple policy initiatives favoring city-centered growth to preserve rural character, efficiently serve population growth, protect scenic beauty and reduce GHG emissions.
The Winery event ordinance should come back to the Board eventually — meanwhile, thanks to Marc and Deb who will be meeting with Lynda Hopkins to lobby for a better result this week.
Stay tuned and thanks for all you do!
PRSC