REDWOOD NEEDLES

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

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Growth wars continue in Fairfield

Two dishonest developer-sponsored initiatives on the ballot

By Jim DeKloe, Solano Group Chair

The leading Fairfield developers qualified two growth initiatives for the November 1999 ballot. If passed by the voters, these initiatives would force Fairfield to develop several pristine valleys&emdash;land near Travis Air Force Base and land now slated for the greenbelt between Fairfield and Vacaville. To add insult to injury, they call their initiatives "the Fairfield Greenbelt and Farmland Protection Initiative" and have launched an expensive campaign (a quarter million dollars and counting) to convince voters that the true goal of Measure I and Measure J is to restrain the developers and the city.

A "greenbelt initiative" written by these land speculators has about the same credibility as a "Sheep Protection Initiative" written by wolves. However, their political consultants conducted extensive polls, which ostensibly informed them that Fairfield residents fear the effect of urban sprawl on their quality of life and favor greenbelt protection. Accordingly, they included a phony greenbelt provision, provided it a fancy title, and paid professional signature gatherers $ 3.00 per signature. Before November, they will have probably spent about half a million dollars more to try to fool voters into believing that a development proposal is an open space proposal.

The passage of the initiatives would:

• accelerate development approvals around Travis Air Force Base

• circle Rockville Hills park with development

• remove some authority of the Fairfield City Council to deny development

• gut the power of the Fairfield Open Space Commission

• undermine the Solano Farmlands and Open Space Foundation

• outlaw a "growth management" plan that would require services like schools to keep up with development

• expand development on the ridgelines above Rancho Solano

• remove land protections gained by citizen's groups in settlements over two key lawsuits

• rezone several areas

• rezone the land of key contributors.

In short, the developers placed their entire wish list blatantly into the initiative. The initiative seems to remove the power of every policy, commission, and local ordinance that had previously rankled them. They went for it all. Local pundits believe that they got too greedy and made the development aspects of the initiative more transparent than it had to be. However, the developers must think that it just means that they will just have to spend more campaign money.

The land grab here is obvious, assuming of course that the voters can see through the haze of all of the slick advertisements, radio ads, and paid telephone banking that will be thrown at them before November. It will take a major grassroots effort to overcome the developer's money and lies to defeat this imminent threat.

The Sierra Club formally opposes these initiatives and we have joined an alliance of several groups to fight it. Fairfield Sierra Club members could really help save their community with volunteered time and money. Others could help in late October and early November by walking precincts. If you want to help or need more information, call Jim DeKloe at 864-3123.

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