Page 4 - Sonoma County Gazette - May 2019
P. 4

LETTERS cont’d from page 3
Veteran’s Village
with PTSD do react in confusion, are jailed, and one veteran, working full- time welding stainless tanks, spiraled out of stability and into San Quentin.
  marathon. Not one person stood up in support of the proposed assault on the coast and its residents.
In the last issue you carried a
long article about Veteran’s Village. Advocates for our homeless are delighted we’re housing veterans. God knows they have earned everything we can do to make their lives bearable, even joyful, but it’s a classic example of abject bureaucratic blindness to spend $1.8M housing 14 people.
She lamely and falsely explains
that $1.8M will inform ordinances
on siting tiny homes in the county or state. We didn’t need to spend $1.8M to figure that out. 14 homes were built to relieve pressure on Supervisor Zane to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE HOMELESS! To have a feather in her cap as she runs for another term. Chris Coursey’s the right candidate, the effective Supervisor.
In the Saturday article by Callahan, it seemed as though the poor organizers have been subjected to unnecessary regulations that were not required of other races or events.
Actually, Tennis Wick, Sonoma Planning Director, stated that the ”proposed half marathon is sufficiently different from other coast events that distinct permitting requirements are warranted.”
It’s a powerful lot to spend on Supervisor Zane’s “county pilot program”. Pilot what?
It is incredulous that Carrillo, a former county supervisor, and Tina Wallis, an attorney could be so obtuse as to not recognize the necessity of permitting from several agencies
for their event. Somehow they also neglected to inform the public from the get-go.
You need to spend that much to decide if 14 houses will do what?
Is there a chance warm, dry, lockable housing will be built for the other 186 vets, let alone any of the 1,800 living/ sleeping under plastic on creeks or sidewalks? Nada.
If she wanted to DO SOMETHING, she could have hosted Safe Parkers looking for legal, safe, quiet sleep (vetted daily by Catholic Charities, enter after 8, leave before 8, no lights/ sound above quiet talk, leave no trace) in her district and used some of the $1.8M to rent porta-potties and wash stands at about $100 a month. There are hundreds of Safe Parkers and families in RVs who are hounded to another parking spot every 72 hours.
The Sonoma County Marathon LLC was formed over a year ago, and in January of this year they formed a foundation regarding the event. NO MENTION OF THEIR OUTREACH TO THE PUBLIC.
However, there is a very inexpensive solution, doable for at least 80% of our homeless, but, except for Combs, Rogers and Tibbetts on Santa Rosa Council, there is zero willingness to support it.
12 years a Supervisor, Zane,
an ordained minister with two divinity degrees she trumpets when in a corner about lack of any real accomplishment to relieve
the miserable, interminable, unjustified lot of the homeless, shows, in fact, almost no evident accomplishment beyond talking, cautioning, threatening the social service bureaucracy, telling lies to PD reporters that they haven’t time to run down, and grandstanding at every homeless event.
For the Press Democrat to present the organizers as the aggrieved party when they had not done their due diligence in public notification and treated the project as a major “win” for the county is pure folly. It makes one wonder if the Sonoma County Marathon LLC had deep support from the Press Democrat from the very beginning.
Supervisor Gorin held out hope
for 4-5 years, with Los Gullicos as
an enthusiastic fall-back. Recently, making outlandish and uninformed statements about the practicality
of the LG site and homeless communities anywhere, she bailed on support for housing homeless people in anything but stick-built housing.
I would ask the PD and its writers to spend more time on public
trust. This marathon exhibited only covert activities by the organizers
There is, and never will be money to build housing for 3000-and- growing homeless people in Sonoma County. They will continue to aggravate downtown merchants, to shit at the curb and in the creeks, (no public toilet open in Santa Rosa for 15 hours across the night) to cost us as much as $9M a month (a sum authenticated by California Business Roundtable and the State Auditor), mostly for Sonoma County medical, psychiatric, and law-enforcement services.
On the same $133,000, 12’x20’ tiny home footprint, a Galen Garden unit that costs government nothing, will fit nicely, but it has no majority support from Sonoma County electeds.
in their attempt to bypass necessary permits, and, I quote from Callahan Saturday article: It appeared initially they needed only to apply for over-the- counter permits that might be more quickly acquired.
Zane says “It’s always cost-effective to house people . . .” It’s humane, but who’s going to measure cost-effective? Living on a creek-bank kills, shortens lives and creates intense misery few understand who piss in the toilet before climbing in a warm bed.
And now, the biggest news you failed to acknowledge: Carrillo
and Wallis were no-shows at the public meeting in Bodega Bay. After “promising” that he would attend the meeting and stating that “We’re going to follow the process,” they failed to show up and face the people.
City, county and state are in deep debt for commitments and problems you read about in the papers, and for problems not revealed. They will never have money to house our homeless.
Zane blithely dings “quick and inexpensive groupings of tiny homes, safe parking and the legalization of .
. . homeless encampments.” She says she supports permanent housing projects. “I think we should put our funding into permanent solutions.” We all would, but there’s no money to for permanent and she knows that.
The Sonoma Coast and its residents deserve full transparency regarding future plans by the Sonoma County Marathon LLC. They deserve
Zane says “I’ve never lost faith . . .” because she implies she got tenacity from her father, yet she refuses to talk about using vacant county property in her district for Safe Park, and the other Supervisors are too cowed to override her.
respect as do the cliffs and the ocean. Everyone deserves full disclosure as to who is financing this event.
Every evening authenticated, tenacious Safe Parkers look for what they hope is a safe curb to park
at, hoping to sleep safely and not get boosted or rudely awakened. Homeowners do call the police to move the sleeper along. Marauding kids do bang on sleeper’s windows and car-tops. Veterans and others
There never will be money to build more than a little homeless housing. Talk to your banker or a builder about costs and available money. And a call or visit to authorized encampments
All of us in Sonoma County who treasure our coastal legacy and resources need answers from Carrillo & Co., and the Press Democrat.
in Oregon/Washington, or
google Dignity Village, proves Zane and Supervisor Gorin tragically
Clare Najarian
 4 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 5/19
LETTERS cont’d on page 5

















































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