Some people
got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Starting
with Clark Thompson. Last January, I wrote here in support of Councilmember
Keith Canevaro’s appointment of Clark to serve during Keith’s military leave. I
believed Clark had no political ax to grind; that he would pursue the
assignment with integrity. I was pleased, several months ago, when he voted for
Councilmember Healy’s Sonoma Mountain Parks resolution. That advisory measure simply
“encourages (State and) local government officials to work together to create a
park and trail system of regional significance on Sonoma Mountain.” After the
vote, Thompson said he wanted to bring the resolution back for a reconsideration
vote, to add a provision for public participation in the process. Good idea, I
thought.
Supporters
of the resolution found out the day before the second vote that
“reconsideration” had been changed to “repeal.” And sure enough, it was
repealed, with swing vote Thompson swinging in line with Sonoma Mountain privatizers
Peter Pfendler and friends. What’s more, the resolution, which had been
approved before a large public audience in an evening session, was killed in a
sparsely attended afternoon session. Clark explained that he had some (private)
conversations with State officials and (privately) reached the conclusion that
the state wasn’t interested.
But the
point of the resolution was to *get* the State interested. Clark, when you led
the successful lobbying effort to get Federal money to finish Petaluma’s flood
fix, you didn’t turn and run the first time some bureaucrat said no. Why did you
so easily give up on Sonoma Mountain? Why wouldn’t you insist that our State
Senator John Burton and the Directors of State Parks and Coastal Conservancy at
the very least come tour the mountain with you? Why the “stealth” repeal, the
kind of sneaky Council tactics that in 1996 led 6000 Petalumans to sign the “Keep
Lafferty” initiative?
Council
Member Moynihan: why did you support a similar resolution before the Parks
Commission last year, and then vote against it this year? Why does your website
call for a “compromise” on Lafferty that’s identical to Peter Pfendler’s plan,
embodied in a 1996 initiative that gathered around 4000 signatures, over 3000
of them forgeries?
Supervisor
Kerns has the right approach. He got the County Road Department to back off the
demand for AASHTO standards on the access road, now requiring that it meet only
County “Fire Safety Standards.” He’s not considering the fire risk to be a
showstopper; nor does he say the presence of sensitive flora and fauna should
restrict visits to docent-led tours; nor does he seem worried about the impact
of a high volume of park visitors on the surrounding farms and ranches. He
knows that offers from willing landowners need to be jumped on, so, despite the
budget crisis at all levels of government, he is aggressively lobbying for
funding.
But Mr.
Kerns: why are you applying these standards only to the Cardoza’s Tolay Lake Ranch,
and not to Sonoma Mountain? Marv and Rita Cardoza gave me a nice hayride tour
of their property a few weeks ago. Its broad valley, future lake, and open
meadows would make a nice complement to the high peaks, streams, and woodlands
of Lafferty Park and the Mitsui Trail to Jack London Park. If you applied the
Tolay standards equally to Tolay and Sonoma Mountain, we might soon be enjoying
parklands in both locations. That would be great! We deserve both. But if you
continue to apply an unprecedented standard to Sonoma Mountain, you are not just
foregoing a unique opportunity to create inexpensive mountain top parkland
(Mitsui’s trail is free, and Lafferty is already publicly owned, needed only a
tiny fraction of the Tolay outlay for a Pfendler defense fund.) You are inviting
other affluent privacy extremists to “Laffertize” Tolay or some other park
project you support. You – and we -- will be left with nothing.
Council
Members Thompson and Moynihan, and SUpervisor Kerns: Who is directing our open
space parks policy Sonoma Mountain? When are you going to reject this expensive
and dangerous double standard?