Page 4 - Sonoma County Gazette April 2019

LETTERS cont’d from page 3
change to the payment schedule that has been being discussed at public workshops and in recent Board and Advisory Committee meetings.
2019 SRP GSA Public Hearing for fee adoption and Approval of Resolution 2nd reading of Groundwater User Registration Program July Implement Groundwater User Registration Program August 1, 2019 Deadline
buck by taking care of the greatest numbers as quickly as possible. . Therefore, a $12 million windfall in new state funding for the homeless pales in the face of the fact that
were we to try to accommodate the remaining 2,986 at the rate of $133,000 per unit, it will take $397,000,000 to create comparable housing for our homeless population! There are
A similar proposal had been made last year, but it stalled at that time. I sent summaries of the fee structure that had been proposed prior to this.
to submit fee schedule to County Assessor .
1,000 emergency shelter beds in the county but they’re available only for temporary short-term stays
Schellville Wildlife Preserve Under Siege
Here are two links that may
help you sort it out. http:// santarosaplaingroundwater.org/wp- content/uploads/Rate-and-Fee-Study- FAQs.pdf The presentation at the recent March public workshop: http:// santarosaplaingroundwater.org/ wp-content/uploads/Community- Meeting-PPT_V4_animated_ada.pdf Yesterday the City representatives expressed concern about their obligations and questioned the fairness to their constituents.
Stay tuned, be involved.
~ Rue Furch
As a consequence, when the Gazette quotes Supervisor Shirlee Zane as saying that housing projects such as the Santa Rosa Veterans Village “are more likely to keep people off the streets in the long term,” there seems to be a complete disconnect from reality. How can we fail to recognize that until that happy day in the far distant future, nearly 3,000 people are already relegated
to lives of perpetual misery for the long term and their prospects in this lifetime are very bleak indeed.
Kathleen Finigan
Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Fee
The fee structure is crafted to
be unfair, with the wine industry paying significantly less than their fair share, and rural residential well users significantly more. The claim rural homes use 0.5 a-f is nonsense; it equates to an average of 460 gallons per day. All winter we do no outdoor irrigation at all. De-minimus users should be exempt from a fee. We use but a tiny fraction of the rainwater that soaks into our land anyway. We do not adversely impact the aquifer/ groundwater and we will NOT be provided any benefit by this new greedy government bureaucracy.
It is the municipal and commercial groundwater use that is the issue, deep industrial scale wells, that need to be monitored as to what effect they are having on the groundwater levels and how they may be impacting nearby shallow wells.
Mike Hilber
As has been true in the Workshops, several domestic well users and a (very) few agricultural interests stated their objection to the metrics used to quantify their use (upon which the amounts were based).
Great work by the author. The question unanswered: who is the buyer of the gas? Is it local utilities? There is a monetary reason the tanks are stored here and not another location. I do hope Rabbit and Zane feel pressure from this article to act on our behalf and consider the notion that if there is that much money involved that money could be used
Mike Marini, speaking for his interests in the winery industry questioned the 3 years of expenses because the funds will primarily be spent on writing the Plan, not on implementation - which means monies will be spent on what he called administration.
to help develop safe and permanent storage facilities that reduce the risks to local residents including our wild friends and neighbors in the wildlife preserve. I will be looking to the Gazette to follow up on the good work of Mr. Martin. Thank you.
I was not clear if it would also offset large agricultural water users. The difference being that the larger Ag operations are often monitoring their water use so data is available for their use. The motion that carried included continuing to flesh out the currently proposed fee structure,
and to further explore the way the County (as representatives of us in the unincorporated areas) might functionally and legally cover the costs that would be allocated to lesser water users in the unincorporated areas within the Santa Rosa Basin
for the next Phase when the Plan is developed.
A big thank you to the author of this piece for a clear-headed analysis of the mess we call a ‘hospital’. It is important to remember that when one cannot achieve persuasion of another via brilliance of thought, one can perhaps achieve the
desired result by substituting BS for brilliance.
Beef McWin
Staff reported on the turnout at
the workshops being primarily “de minimus” (residential/limited use) water users who spoke passionately in opposition to paying for water
use - giving a variety of reasons
and positions. Supervisor Zane and Chair/Supervisor Hopkins offered an alternative. It was not detailed, but the gist was that the County might pay the portion that is proposed to be allocated to “de minimus” and small Ag operations.
OpEd: Measure A: What Voters Actually Approved and What’s Needed
ONLINE article after the election
This is what is going on now with AAMG fogging the lenses of the hospital board of directors. The entire charade before us is a demonstration of how simple it is to befuddle a well-intentioned but under-informed citizenry into voting blindly with
no real knowledge of what they are voting for or against.
4 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 4/19
The Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) Board of Directors met yesterday to review the proposed fee schedules, a Registration Program, and a number of other issues.
As a detachee, I encourage everyone who wants real medical coverage in the west county to drive this bad business out of town and start over with what originally was a
In a surprise turn of events, the two Supervisors on the Board suggested a
LETTERS cont’d on page 5
Upcoming Meetings (current
schedule): April 11, 2019 SRP GSA meeting to review groundwater user fees Public Noticing June 13,
great idea. Beef Mcwin