REDWOOD NEEDLES

Presented by the Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Newsletter,
The REDWOOD NEEDLES

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Rural Heritage Initiative

The Future of Sonoma County is in your hands.

The Sierra Club, in conjunction with other environmental groups, is proud to endorse the Rural Heritage Initiative (RHI). RHI will protect rural and agricultural areas in Sonoma County by strengthening the General Plan. The support of Sierra Club members is crucial for this initiative to succeed. Here's a Land-Use quiz.

Q. What underlying document protects Sonoma County from rampant sprawl and chaotic land use?

A. The General Plan is Sonoma County's "Constitution" with respect to land use. The General Plan lays out the range of allowable uses for land, and determines the range of allowable zoning designations. The General Plan says that population growth should primarily be in the cities rather than in rural areas.

Q. What protects the General Plan?

A. Very little now. The General plan can be weakened or modified whenever three of the five Supervisors decide to do so. The current system makes it too easy for the General Plan to be altered by the Supervisors in the face of pressure from lobbyists or campaign contributors. We can't count on future Boards of Supervisors to support the General Plan in face of development pressure. A few seemingly innocuous amendments could easily start the cascade of sprawl that would result in disappearance of agriculture here, as it did in the northern Santa Clara Valley.

Q. What can we do about it?

A. Qualify and pass the Rural Heritage Initiative.
The campaign for the Rural Heritage Initiative (RHI) is off and running. Similar to Measure J adopted in Napa County ten years ago, and Ventura County's SOAR Initiative, RHI will protect the General Plan by locking in the residential densities and land use designations for four different categories of rural and agricultural land uses. These are parcels outside of city boundaries--in the unincorporated County. After this measure passes, the allowable residential density of these parcels can only be increased by a vote of the people. This measure is the rural complement to the Urban Growth Boundaries already adopted by 6 Sonoma County cities and will protect 80% of Sonoma County in a single stroke. We are confident that the voters will overwhelmingly endorse this initiative if it is presented to them in November, but we need to gather more than 22,000 signatures by May 22 to get it on the ballot.

That's where members of the Sierra Club come in. These signatures will be gathered by volunteers, and that means you.

We need your help in four ways.

1) Sign the petition. This is the very least you can do. Copies of the petition will be available at the following locations.
Environmental Center (544-7651)
Greenbelt Alliance Office (575-4218) Call first to confirm that someone will be there.

2) Carry a petition. It is not enough that Sierra Club members sign petitions, we need the signatures of people beyond the "environmental" community. Signature gatherers will meet every Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 AM from now until May 22. After a brief training session (20 minutes), pairs of volunteers will disperse to high traffic areas for approximately two hours of signature collecting. This is the most efficient way to collect the large number of signatures that we need.
Call 575-4218 to volunteer.

3) Organize others to carry petitions. We will ultimately need several hundred volunteers to collect signatures. This means that we also need dozens of coordinators.
Call Jack Street at 433-5348 for more information.

4) Contribute financially. Your contribution will help defray the costs of drafting, printing, and publicizing the Initiative.
Checks should be payable to Citizens for Sonoma County's Future, 50 Santa Rosa Avenue, Suite 307, Santa Rosa, CA 95404.
For more information about RHI, call 575-4218 or see the Rural Heritage Initiative web site: www.ruralheritage.net

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