Bulletin for March 30, 2009
Sonoma County Land Use Issues with Will Richards
By Anne Abrams
Preliminaries
 President David McDonald welcomed everyone to the meeting at St. Rose at the usual time. |
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Thanks to the following Rotarians for their assistance with today’s
meeting: Secretary: Janet Codding Cashier: Matt Delaney Greeter: Phil Talamantes Tickets: Harry Rubins and Dale Sipe Rotary Moment: Chris Parr-Feldman Photos: Chuck Baker (standing in for Jim Valinoti, thanks Chuck!) Bulletin, Anne Abrams Program: Pam Davis, set up…I bet Dale Sipe had something to do with that. Thanks, everyone. |
The Pledge: Pres David called on Jim Sullivan lead us in an extra enthusiastic salute to our flag.
The Rotary Moment: Chris Parr Feldman offered the moment: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. " -P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
| Visiting Rotarians and Guests: Phil Talamantes introduced our visiting Rotarians: Sunrise Club of Santa Rosa, Mike Flannigan, father of Irish dancer, Rancho Cotati Club’s Bill Thomas (mortgage), Santa Rosa Club’s Paul Hamilton (Insurance), and Rohnert Park/Cotati Club Bill Dreisbach. Welcome all! |
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| Guests were also introduced including Brian Cox, Scholarship Counselor from Piner High School with our Piner Students of the Month. |
Announcements & Such
President David McDonald announced he will not attend the meeting next week and we will have a "surprise" fill in …..could this be Susan?
Two people from the club will be attending the District Conference on May 14-17. Thanks Chris Parr-Feldman and Barbara Larson for attending. Maureen McDaniel may also be attending as Mike Merrill has another engagement.
We will be dark on Monday May 11 so that people will be able to attend the district conference.
There will be a Red Badge Dinner on April 18. This is an opportunity for the membership committee winners to dine in style with our newest members of the club. All red badge members are invited. The dinner will be at David McDonald’s home. Directions to his house are coming soon. Expect a very fun night!
The projects committee is planning to meet directly after this meeting, so if you missed it you might want to follow up on what happened.
Tracy and Tarina received a much deserved applause for their work providing for the SCARF dinner for 80 people!
Tarina Hall announced that she is taking signups for Rebuilding Together. On April 25, Saturday, Jim Hinton will lead a crew of volunteers to help with repairs to mobile homes at a park. This is a fabulous way to contribute to community. Let Tarina know if you are interested.
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Doug Angelo announced the dictionary committee will be putting labels on 290 dictionaries that will be delivered to elementary school students in West Santa Rosa. If you can come and help it’s at David McDonald’s office at 2800 Cleveland Avenue on Wednesday, April 1 at 5:15PM. Got wine? Bring some.
There will be a fireside tonight at 5pm at the office of
Bill Dodson. There will be snack and
wine arranged by Toodie. The office is over Barnes and Noble
Bookstore. Important: Park in the lot after 4PM and enter off D Street.
Students of the Month
Bob Zeni introduced two students of the month from Piner High School.
We met Laura Yuchec who gave an interesting talk about her interest in music and drama. She also is on the Varsity wrestling team and "I’ve made boys cry" she says. Although she is a thespian and an athlete, she plans to attend Brown University’s special program in humanities and pre-medicine. If she gets in she won’t mind paying back the student loans.
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We also met Nick Ratta who is also a senior at Piner. He has a long time interest in baseball and attended the game where Barry Bond hit his 756th homer. He had the photograph in hand to prove it. He’s played baseball his whole life, plays varsity for Piner High and has volunteered as coach for youth in baseball. He hopes to study physics and math with a career in Civil Engineering and also hopes to play baseball in college. He has applied to several colleges.
Both students were presented a plaque by President David McDonald. Each will compete for a Rotary scholarship to be announced at the end of the term.
Craft Talk by Darcy Fellows
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Darcy has flown under the radar for six months but today she
finally was called on to deliver it. Darcy grew up at the Santa Rosa
Gymnastics Club here in Santa Rosa, attending at the early age of three. She
now owns the fitness business, has two children ages 10 and 4 is happily
divorced. Some of you have met her boyfriend Jason
(seen together here, at the President David & First Lady Kim McDonald’s
Rotary Christmas Party.) |
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| Darcy claims to be her father’s only son having obtained a gun license as a youth and enjoyed hunting. She is her mother’s only daughter and as such did a lot of dancing and "girlie" things as well. In addition to having taught and coached dancing and gymnastics, she also ran dance studios for three years. She studied martial arts and Karate for 10 years and has earned her third degree black belt. She also teaches self defense. |
She studied business and bought the Santa Rosa Gymnastics business at age 30. In three years she tripled the size of the business to 300-400 and hopes to reach her ideal size of 500 students. Many of her gymnastics students have won regional and national honors in competition. She aims to teach a positive attitude and self-motivation to her students. In her time away from the business, Darcy enjoys reading, camping, and travel.
Recognition
Scott Bartley was fined $25 for speaking out and voting alone
on an issue at the Santa Rosa City Council that he saw as a big-picture
issue of ethics. At one time he was asked to recuse himself on issues due to
a conflict of interest, and he made the hard decision to end his association
with a group in order to maintain the rule, as well as the spirit
of fairness. The new council in his opinion has lost such sensitivities. He
was fined anyway ($25) for the article on the cover of Empire News in the
Press Democrat for speaking out. Maybe we should pay Scott the $25 for
speaking out and voting his conscience for higher standards. (Oops there
goes his cell phone! Ok the fine could be for that.)
Raffle: $625
John Withers got lucky with the raffle ticket but not drawing a
marble, not the right one. Susan Nowacki took home yet another bottle
of Albertina wine. This was the second week in a row that Susan has
been the lucky winner collecting over $50 of Fred’s fine mountain Cabernet
Sauvignon! Have you purchased raffle tickets lately?
Program: Land Use Issues in Sonoma County
Will Richards agreed to step in at the last minute with a program as the speaker had car trouble and was unable to make it. He did a fine job of enlightening the club about community issues and landfill problems that affect Sonoma County.
Will Richards is knowledgeable about air quality because of his work as a consultant.
And before he talked about landfill issues he chose to talk a few minutes about transportation. The Sonoma County Transportation Authority is revising a 25-year Comprehensive Transportation Plan that will be completed this spring, one year behind schedule. This plan is important because it determines the transportation projects to be built in Sonoma County. For example, when Measure M, a ¼ % sales tax was passed to fund transportation projects, the projects included in the ballot measure and now being built were at the top of the list in the previous Comprehensive Transportation Plan.
The plan now being prepared has improved language that addresses issues including greenhouse gases and transportation and land use related issues. It sets benchmarks to be achieved for decreases in greenhouse gas emissions, personal hours of delay stuck in traffic congestion, and vehicle miles traveled as well as improvements in the pavement condition index.
The Sonoma County Transportation Authority computer model was used to evaluate the proposed list of projects to see if the benchmarks will be achieved. And the model shows that projects will not take us where we want to go. Where do we go from her? Change projects?
One of the projects is to extend Farmers Lane south. Many think this project would open up new land to development similar to the Fountain Grove Development. But Richards states that the developers already have established access routes and therefore are not required to pay for the extension of Farmers Lane. The project will be funded by a combination of Measure M funds and development fees.
Another project being evaluated is a new ferry service from Port of Sonoma to San Francisco. An environmental analysis of that project showed that greenhouse gases would INCREASE by factor of 5 over those passengers simply driving the distance to SF Ferry building. Another is the widening of 101 through the narrows and other bottlenecks.
The Environmental Impact Report was scheduled to be released today. However the staff was very busy with work determining which projects could be funded with federal funding from the Stimulus Plan.
Topic Two: Solid Waste/ Landfill Issues
The Water Quality Control Board discovered water leaching from the refuse into the ground water and closed the County landfill. The estimate to repair the landfill is between $ 70-100 million. Our current plan is to temporarily haul our garbage to Novato and Solano County.
The Board of Supervisors is trying to decide whether or not to privatize the landfill business. There are three proposals with one leading contender negotiating in closed door session. Recommendations are due in June. Then public input will be accepted. Anti-privatization advocates point out that we currently have already $10 million toward reopening the landfill and the total cost could be as small as $20 million. Do we want to ship these recyclable resources out of county? What would selling the landfill to a firm that earns income from tipping fees do to the incentive to recycle waste? Will Richards would like to see more transparency in making this decision for the people of Sonoma County.
Will sees greenhouse gases as a very large issue in deciding how to manage the landfill. Currently we are using methane from the landfill to generate electric power at the recycling station. There are three important factors to keep in mind: 1- economic cost 2- greenhouse gases 3) the effect on recycling.
During the Q and A session:
- Incinerator is not seriously discussed.
- Methane is collected to run equipment.
- Resources are wasted in incineration process.
- Cars create less pollution than Pt of Sonoma ferry because ferries use energy to make waves and create turbulent wakes. The Larkspur ferry has sufficient ridership to be viable and effective means of transportation, while projections for the Port of Sonoma do not indicate viability.
- Rail is most efficient in reducing greenhouse gases (SMART train)
- Is SMART a train to nowhere? No it goes to Larkspur and will be linked to other regional transportation systems.
Thanks Will for an informative program from our own membership.
| Your Bulletin Reporter: Anne Abrams  |
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