Politics - local

When a source first shared the Sonoma Valley Capacity Threshold Study, he said it wasn't public and that it wouldn't become public until after the Stakeholders' working group that informed the consultant -- GHD -- meets formally with the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Council on the fourth Wednesday of November. Margaret Spaulding and Matt Dickey are the North Valley members. I blew the Study off at first since it wasn't public and I couldn't do anything with it, and my source was worried about even giving it to me. This was in July, I think. It sat, unread, downloaded into the bowels of the KP Library directory.

Fast forward to October. I bestir myself to read the Summary and Conclusions, fully expecting another whitewash of the traffic impacts of winery events. But no! These folks, international and unbeholden to local interests, actually took a hard look at existing and projected traffic and came up with a list of recommendations, some of which would be anathema to the wine/tourist industry, including removing two major industry events from the September calendar to relieve overcrowding.

At the minimum, the Study concludes that big events do impact traffic on Sonoma Valley's poor roads, and that there is little likelihood of the roads ever being improved -- no money. Following that logic, the Study suggests tempering events and monitoring scheduling, limiting parking offsite, using offsite parking and buses for very large events (over 2,000 people). But, wait! There's more.

On Oct. 21,  most members of the Sonoma County Planning Agency were escorted on a Mobile Educational Workshop sponsored by the Sonoma County Vintners, that visited three wineries for presentations on the intrinsic value of the wine industry, presumably to be kept in mind when making decisions on various winery/tourism related development applications they may consider, including events, more events and maybe some more events, all basic to shoring up the industry. The planners were educated on the importance of selling wine directly to consumers, which requires consumers to be present at the point of sale.

After reading the Study, my first reaction was that the Industry was going to set their hair on fire and go nuts. Silly me. They set the county's hair on fire and are driving them nuts. They are lobbying against the study -- in my mind -- before the public even gets to see it, which doesn't strike me as very civic minded. That the Planners went along with it is also disturbing to a high degree.