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Springs Town Hall Meeting gathers a crowd

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Sonoma Valley Sun

Close to 50 people turned out last week for the newly renamed Springs Community Alliance’s Town Hall Meeting. Held at the Valley of The Moon Teen Center, the evening was moderated by Sonoma Valley Unified School District board member, Cam Hawing, and revolved around youth in the Springs.

According to Stephen Cox, chair of the SCA steering committee and a member of the Springs Redevelopment Advisory Committee, the Springs Community Alliance –formerly STFCC – has been reborn with a new name and goal of expanding the number of people involved in Springs issues.

“We want to open up this forum to individuals, families, businesses and public agencies and build a solid membership of folks united by the Springs and committed to bettering our neighborhood,” said Cox. “This organization will be a hub of information and if we’re successful, we’ll soon have a lot more people involved.”

At the meeting, the public comment portion centered around the unsightly and unsafe fire damage to a mobile home along Highway 12 as well as ire about the new Pipe Pirates shop with one community member urging citizens to contact state representatives and the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to object. On a more positive note, Springs resident Dmitra Smith discussed a new mural that would get teens involved in a public art project.

Among the night’s scheduled presentations, Patricia Talbot of the Sonoma Valley Community Health Center discussed health insurance options and how underutilized the counseling services at the center are. Justin Frese, deputy superintendent of the SVUSD talked about how Measure H will help improve vocational and technical programs for students throughout the Valley.

Additionally, Social Advocates for Youth and the No Name Café were on hand with a video produced by Operation Youth that underscored the message of the Sonoma Valley Coalition for the Prevention of Underage Drinking. Police Chief Brett Sacket also spoke on the issue and reminded the adults in attendance of Sonoma’s social host ordinance as well as the dangers of teen drinking.
To learn more about the Springs Community Alliance, visit springscommunityalliance.org.



One thought on “Springs Town Hall Meeting gathers a crowd

  1. The last thing Boyes Hot Springs needs is to be gentrified and turned into another cutesy-pie playground for elite tourists. What kind of place will the Sonoma Valley be when local residents can’t afford to shop or eat anywhere and thrift stores are even massively overpriced? Boyes Hot Springs needs La Luz and the Latino community to step up and take the reins away from rich white guys trying to extend their commercial cheese chewing, wine tasting influence into the only real neighborhood left around here. I see much whining and crying about the appearance of certain buildings. The upshot to all of this is a thrust to basically sterilize Boyes Hot Springs into some kind of Healdsburgesque/ Sonoma Plaza high priced shopping mall. It’s clear that the effect of this will be to eventually displace the Latino community. What next? Get rid of day laborers on the corner and people lining up for charity? That might be unsightly for the delicate sensibilities of Bed and Breakfast patrons. The whole wine tasting ethos is like high pricing cancer for blue collar residents. The more gentrified and cutesy-pie things get, the less the working class can afford to be there. It’s clear that a certain set around here sees Sonoma/ Boyes Hot Springs as a cash cow where anything to do has to cost at least $25.00, even a home tour or a garden lecture and pricing can be leveraged to extreme levels as certain patrons will pay. It’s like we are stuck in a theme park airport where highway robbery is the norm.

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