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Vote for… anybody else

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Sonoma Valley Sun

Protect Sonoma’s philosophy on this City Council race is as simple as ABC. Anybody But Cribb.

This is based on our two years’ experience with Cribb as he served on the Planning Commission, most significantly in his brief tenure as the Chair.  Cribb repeatedly treated neighbors and other concerned Sonoma residents with disrespect, even disdain. At the same time, he was overly accommodating to developers. Cribb has not served Sonoma well on the Planning Commission. Don’t put him on City Council and give him even more power to serve the developers, at the cost of the residents.

Three projects that stand out are Schocken Hill, FSE and the West Napa Hotel. Schocken Hill was the most recent and egregious example of Cribb’s accommodation to developers, at the expense of residents. Sonoma’s development code states that hillside homes cannot exceed a 5,000 square foot grading pad on a minimum 10 acre lot. As Chair of the PC, Cribb argued that this should be interpreted as allowing multiple pads of 5,000 square feet per lot. He suggested that this even meant you could have 60,000 square feet graded on these 3 acre parcels. He approved the projects with 20,000 square feet grading on lots less than 3 acres, far exceeding the code’s allowance.

Fortunately, dedicated neighbors appealed this to City Council, at great personal expense and effort. City Council (Hundley, Harrington and Agrimonti) upheld the appeal and rejected these projects. Developer, Bill Jasper, is now suing Sonoma. Jasper sure would like to have Cribb on City Council to get support for his lawsuit.

There are many solid candidates for City Council.  We strongly support ABC.

— Sheila O’Neill, Karin Skooglund

Protect Sonoma

 



One thought on “Vote for… anybody else

  1. Mr. Cribb does seem to be a stalking horse for developers behind the controversial FSE project, the Schocken Hill Housing Project For the Terminally Wealthy, and others. If his planning commissioner’s interpretation of the hillside ordinance hadn’t been struck down on appeal, hills around Sonoma could be paved over with 100,000 square foot homes, each composed of a series of 20 connected 5,000 square foot graded ‘pads.’ One wonders if he realized or cared that his interpretation would effectively nullify the guideline itself.
    Equally concerning was his inexplicable disregard of contrary testimony from all former council members who actually enacted the hillside ordinance guideline. That, and his public verbal disrespect of a sitting council member who upheld the Schocken Hill appeal, should disqualify him from joining her on a city council that can expect to hear many more appeals from the Planning Commission.

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