Fred Allebach
7/16/24
Summary notes and thoughts on screening of new SDC movie by Glen Ellen resident Carolyn Scott
Small is Beautiful,The Quest to Save the Valley of the Moon, The Consequences of Over-Development at SDC
Introduction
This Sebastiani Theater event was packed and was attended by key figures in Sonoma Valley’s (SV) protection and preservation community, largely comprising senior, white, propertied residents. Georgia Kelly of Praxis Peace Institute led the meeting.
The movie featured a list of various local advocacy groups who drink the same local policy Kool Aid, including: The Sun, Kenwood Press, Sierra Club/ Teri Shore, Sonoma Mountain Preservation/ Nancy Kirwan, Sonoma Ecology Center, Wake Up/ Josette Brose-Eichar, Valley of the Moon Alliance/ Kathy Pons, and all the Mobilize Sonoma/ SVNext100 alliance. This aggregate group comprises the SDC and SV protector coalition.
This coalition has fought many battles together and has a lot of experience with political infighting and PR campaigns, raising money. The movie is not an effort at balanced public education but rather a one-sided battle to be won or lost, to “find the right solution” as it reflects the interests of the coalition.
Movies notes, conclusions, and thoughts
1. SDC Coalition’s Vision
- Notes: The coalition, under the Sonoma ValleyNext100 banner, aims to replace county land use authority with their own vision of limited development to preserve local character and environment. This is an effort at self-determination by one slice of SV residents, favoring a certain set of values: low-density land use, preserving rural/ small town historic character, and limiting resource use.
-The proposed agency to replace the County is a possible Sonoma Mountain Community Services District (SMCSD.) The SMCSD boundary is all west of Arnold from Glen Ellen to Diamond A, excluding Temelec and the Springs. Census-wise the SMCSD area has a large majority of wealthy, white, property owners.
- Thoughts: This vision is self-serving, primarily benefiting a privileged, landed class at the expense of broader community needs, particularly those of lower-income residents.
-Lower SV south of Kenwood has @ 35,000 people, 20,000 or so who live in the unincorporated Springs area, 7000+ of which are immigrant Latinos. Essential workers, the Latino/ BIPOC community, and renters are an equal-sized cohort to the SDC coalition but whose interests are seriously not properly advocated for.
-A main talking point is that this SDC cohort is not being properly served by the county government and that the representation is unfair because other supervisors who SV citizens have not voted for get to vote on issues that impact SV. In this sense, there is plenty of unfairness to go around in SV. The greatest needs by the numbers are those of lower-income, unincorporated-area essential workers, also the most under-represented.
-In terms of the Sustainability paradigm’s triple bottom line and full cost accounting, the SDC coalition places environmental values on top and while equity values for lower-income residents are minimized; the economic policy pillar ends up seen as a power struggle between the local landed class and bigger investment capital seeking to monetize SV; essential workers interests are collateral damage.
-The fact that wealthy US whites as a class have the highest per capita GHG impacts in the world is not mentioned. SDC is a fight for environmental protection to benefit a group that has the most unsustainable characteristics in the world.
-Lower-income resident’s fairness and representation issues are minimized by the SDC coalition, as seen by status quo stakeholder’s resistance to the idea of Sonoma annexing the Springs. Self determination is good for the local landed wealthy, not good for the essential worker class.
2. Thoughts of Growth and Development
- Notes: The coalition views growth and urban sprawl negatively, advocating for maintaining the current smallish character of Sonoma Valley.
- Thoughts: This opposition to growth is exclusionary, benefiting those who are already landed and established and content with the status quo while neglecting the needs of lower-income workers and renters who are essential to the community but lack representation.
3. Use of Fear Tactics
- Notes: Fire danger and evacuation issues were heavily emphasized, using imagery and narratives to stoke fear and opposition to development at the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC).
- Thoughts: This approach is propagandistic and manipulative, focusing on inciting fears and emotional reactions without addressing broader socio-economic and environmental contexts. It is a tactic to rally support by inciting fear rather than fostering informed discussion.
-Fire risk is real and deserves community attention, all should beware to see how inciting evac fears serves a prior NIMBY agenda.
-SDC coalition members are adept at creating propaganda and stoking fears as part of their political MO to protect and preserve SV against various perceived evil interlopers. “Sprawl” (any incremental growth) is invoked as a hot buzzword, pointing to the needs to “save” SV from this evil fate. Same tactics by the same people in the 2020 UGB fight: frame growth and development as evil, act like that is 100% the truth; ignore and deny all other issues like SV history of segregation.
-Anti-growth philosophy and negative effects of human overpopulation are de rigueur coalition backdrop material. Growth and human overpopulation are seen as major negatives, which they may be, however reliance on mainly environmental reasons, and wealthy white people’s place in that environment is the dominant view to which the coalition propaganda machine is turned.
-In the above sense, the movie is spin designed to rally the troops for a purely partisan fight to control SDC.
-The SDC coalition postulates and speaks as if they alone represent “the community.”
-There are multiple fire evac studies coming down the pike, some by government sources and these will be reviewed in public by the SV Community Advisory Commission.
-The SDC coalition-funded fire evac study, like all consultant studies, has to be seen as biased to the interests of those paying for the study, as much to prove a prior point as to be objective. (This is what SCD coalition people say about RHNA and CEQA studies; take home point, it is wise to be on guard for the biases of all parties.) All these fire evac studies will need to be looked at in aggregate and it will need to be decided land-use-wise, if fire evac fears can be the main reason to maintain a segregated, exclusive white community, i.e. “the community” in place.
4. Historical Context and Past Battles
- Notes: The coalition has a long history of mostly successful opposition to various development projects in Sonoma Valley, reinforcing their credibility and determination. They are experts at using CEQA to stall and kill projects they don’t like.
- Thoughts: While this track record shows commitment, it also highlights a pattern of resistance that may be more about preserving privilege than genuine environmental stewardship. This resistance often overlooks the broader community’s needs for growth and affordable housing. The coalition feels itself righteous and has a messianic feel to it, a quest to save SV… however the interests are narrow.
5. Community and Equity Issues
- Notes: The concept of "community" is central to the coalition's narrative, yet it predominantly represents the interests of white property-owning seniors rather than the SV working-class population. Hence, the SMCSD cordons off the wealthiest and whitest area west of Arnold. In concert, Sonoma city and it’s land use and UGB (urban growth boundary) act to protect city wealthy white landowner’s interests. Overall this politically astute and active coalition may end up hanging the whole SV essential worker class out to dry in the unincorporated Springs.
- Thoughts: The coalition’s claim to support equity is questionable, as their actions primarily protect their own interests and do not effectively address the challenges faced by lower-income, working-class residents who lack representation and power.
-While the SDC coalition can find every reason to protect plants and animals and the assumed SDC wildlife corridor, they then find every reason to not support Spings annexation, the successful outcome of which would share SV power and give Latino essential workers a larger voice on local affairs
6. Environmental and Infrastructure Concerns
- Notes: Concerns were raised about groundwater resources, traffic congestion, and the degradation of the community’s way of life due to potential development.
- Thoughts: While these concerns are valid, the coalition's stance can be seen as an excuse to block development rather than a balanced approach to sustainable growth and social needs. The emphasis on preserving the status quo often disregards the need for equitable development solutions.
-SDC coalition members claim to be pro affordable housing, but their primary interest is in keeping housing at a small scale, i.e. lower density, where it is impossible to produce such housing.
7. Legal and Political Strategies
- Notes: The coalition has used legal challenges to delay and alter development plans at SDC, advocating for public ownership and preservation of the site.
- Notes: This CEQA-stalling strategy, while effective in delaying development, is obstructive and potentially self-serving, aiming to maintain control rather than finding inclusive and practical solutions that benefit the broader community. CEQA has been called “the NIMBY law” by some, and efforts have been made to reel it in as an obstructionist tool.
-Whether CEQA benefits NIMBYs or not, the whole CEQA-housing crisis-stage housing law-RHNA-local control mess belies a core human tendency, to cling to myopic, self-serving group rationales and then fight to the death over them, just as with religion. There is no one objective truth here, all have interests and the solution is to either finesse them or endlessly fight about them
-SDC coalition members claim to be pro-DEI, to be inclusive, and to be pro-affordable housing but their actions show that this is not even close to their highest priority; exclusive values and results are championed in practice.
8. State Housing Mandates
- Notes: The coalition strongly opposes state housing mandates, viewing them as corrupt, profit-driven, and detrimental to local control and community character.
- Thoughts: This opposition aligns with a broader NIMBY perspective and NIMBYism in general is detrimental to addressing the urgent need for affordable housing. The coalition’s stance is short-sighted and exclusionary, prioritizing the local control of a few over broader societal needs. The coalition claims to support affordable housing but their land use policy stances make production near impossible, which is why we see the bulk of 100% affordable projects “dumped” on the unincorporated Springs area, bc other areas defend against and disincentivize all projects
-As noted above, political positions on housing needs and laws, and on SDC take on the flavor of true belief and positions become a matter of faith. Whatever facts there are are manipulated to support one side or another. What would be fair would be for all points to get a slice of the final policy pie, not have it be a winner takes all zero sum game.
-If the SDC coalition can figure out how to make low density deed restricted housing, that would be a boon for the whole US.
-In a state-wide battle to preserve and protect a universally white-advantaged suburbia, CA state housing laws are a seen by the coalition as corrupt and usurping the local control power of suburban whites.
-In an unattributed news column, the Sun calls state housing laws a “collusion between state mandates and profit-driven developers.” This view is an article of faith. In realty, some developers are bad, some are good, and state housing laws represent a wide cross-section of interests trying to address an objective affordability and supply problem.
-The SDC coalition questions the validity of a state housing crisis, RHNA is seen as false and inaccurate. This gets back to that faith and a priori assumptions run how people think and believe about issues; first common interests are found, then PR and propaganda is made to support that.
-This goes right back to what interests are at stake and what data and information source gets cited.
-Lower-income workers and BIPOC interests (that I represent) cite UC Berkeley Terner Center and allied sources while SDC-type cohorts cite the Palo Alto Embarcadero Institute, that has been called “a NIMBY think tank.
-As William Blake said, “both read the Bible day and night, whilst thou readest black and I read white.”
-We are dealing with propaganda from interest-, identity-, economic class-, and racial cohort-based groups who frame the same exact situation in radically different ways; all claiming to have the facts.
-In reality this is all like the blind men feeling the elephant metaphor, every group has a valid point, and in a typical human way, look past each other's interests and try to say only they have “the facts.” Will we ever get along and fund true common solutions for whole communities?
9. Panel Discussion Insights
- Notes: Panelists, including local advocates and residents, shared personal stakes in the issue and discussed strategies for influencing county and state decisions.
- Thoughts: The personal stakes and strategies discussed often reflect the interests of a privileged group rather than a balanced consideration of the community’s diverse needs. The emphasis on personal loss and fear can overshadow the need for inclusive and equitable development policies for all classes and groups.
10. Future Steps and Advocacy
- Notes: Continued pressure on county supervisors and state officials is planned, with a focus on preventing dense development and ensuring Glen Ellen-area community-driven solutions.
- Thoughts: This SDC coalition approach maintains a status quo that benefits a select few while hindering necessary progress towards housing supply enhancement, affordable housing, and inclusive development. The coalition’s vision for the future is exclusionary and fails to address the needs and interests of the broader community.
The event underscored the coalition’s commitment to preserving Sonoma Valley’s rural character while highlighting the socio-economic divides and contentious dynamics between development interests and local preservation efforts. Critiques here emphasize the need for a more inclusive and balanced approach that considers the needs of all community members.
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