Letters to the Editor

Thanks to
firefighters,
neighbors
Editor: In reference to the fire that burned our home on Friday, May 25, my wife, Miren and I would like to express our appreciation to the firefighters that diligently fought the blaze and were able to salvage some of our belongings under tarps. We would also like to thank our neighbors for their support in the crisis and advise our friends that we are actively coping with the aftermath and consider ourselves fortunate.
Bob Herrschaft

Thanks Sun, for
far-right editorial
Editor: With apologies to the John Birch Society, the Christian Coalition and the Friends of David Duke, because I beat them all to it – a very big thank you to the Sun’s editorial staff for its support of stronger government powers over potential troublemakers – particularly children.
Of course those kids should have their pictures taken! 
Just like those wacko right to life people who scream the odds around the women’s clinics – scary – assassins, some of them. And the people at the gates of San Quentin on execution day – they could go out and kill someone couldn’t they? Same story with weird sects and fringe cults and atheists and homosexuals and gypsies. They should all have their photos taken. Any group with views outside the norm should have their photos taken. They might all be troublemakers. Policemen should get Canons as well as Glocks.
Problem is, far righties like me and your editorial staff might be considered minorities out to shake things up – and they might take our photos. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. 
Tom Whitworth

The ‘60s live on
Editor: The Sun’s characterization of my participation in the May 15 student immigration rally on Sonoma’s plaza as a “best attempt to relive the ‘60s,” is condescending and contemptuous of my commitment to civil rights, peace and the civil liberties of the Sonoma Valley High School students who walked out in protest of the recent inhumane immigration raids in the Springs and in support of humane immigration policies for the Latino workers who are the conerstone of our economy.
I have engaged in marches, rallies and civil disobedience in Sonoma over the last decade without ever being photographed by a uniformed officer. On May 15, Sonoma Police Officer Jerome Cobert’s responses to my questions concerning his photographing student and nonstudent participants were evasive, nonresponsive or contradictory. The 150 students were energetic, passionate, orderly and respected the law. They were escorted by three faculty members and the principal, and their absences were a matter of written record.
I believe there were no legitimate reasons for the officer’s activities.
It is true that my commitment to peace and social justice was born in the 1960s, but it is sparked by today’s events. The Sonoma High students were acting in the traditions of the 1960’s, and I am proud to join them in 2007.
Mike Smith

Police didn’t have
right to photograph
marchers
Editor: In its May 24 editorial, the Sun speculated about what justification local police might have had for photographing the May 15 student march and demonstration in favor of immigration reform. Unfortunately, it didn’t consult the California Constitution, nor the “(Attorney General Bill) Lockyer Manual” (2003) that interpreted it to local law enforcement. The manual states clearly that law enforcement must have a reasonable suspicion of a crime to engage in surveillance of political activity. “Reasonable suspicion” means having at least some evidence upon which to proceed. And “crimes” means what it says. Mere police conjecture ahead of time that some laws might be broken does not, according to our state constitution, allow the police to photograph (and hence create a dossier on) people publicly gathering to express their views. Whoever your “legal folks” were who talked about no expectation of privacy for public expression of political speech, they had no familiarity with the privacy provisions of our state constitution nor with the authoritative Lockyer Manual.
Was there reasonable suspicion of a crime on May 15? Hardly.
In fact, the photographing officer, after first falsely informing us that he was filming for his own personal reasons, finally admitted to me that he had been assigned to do so by Sgt. Shubel. Which means before the march even began. Which means there was no reasonable suspicion of a crime, just a determination by local police to illegally surveil a group of people in the United States of America who were peacefully and publicly expressing their opinion.
Your quibbles that the students cut classes and were blocking traffic are ridiculous. The first may or may not have been true, but you didn’t mention that the students were actually being accompanied and assisted by SVHS teachers. And I seriously doubt that cutting class rises to the level of a crime justifying surveillance.
Secondly, I personally walked with the students from the campus to the Plaza. Walk monitors, including the teacher, were meticulously careful at each intersection, including at Napa Street, to herd us across quickly and to minimize traffic delays. To say that they “obstructed traffic lanes” is desperate overreaching and simply not true.
Thirdly, the officer continued photographing during the time everyone was simply standing peacefully in the Plaza. No crimes had been, or obviously were going to be committed, yet he continued his photographic surveillance until challenged by us. The reasons for that surveillance were obviously not for cutting class, or blocking traffic, or fears that this assembly would degenerate into a snarling melee that would ravage the town. The police chief has assured us we will be given those reasons, but the public does not yet know them (as of this writing, May 24), nor does the Sun.
Your reference to us as “doing their best to re-live the ‘60s” was a silly jibe, and as such unworthy of you, especially in an editorial. What we of the ‘60s – and of the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and of 2007 – continually need reminding of is that the government snooping and data collection is not an innocuous, “protective” activity. Real privacy protections were voted into our Constitution in 1972 by state voters, after decades of widespread violations of our First and Fourth Amendment rights by almost every level of law enforcement in the country, shockingly documented later by the 1976 U.S. Senate Church Committee. Just last year, a comprehensive report by the ACLU documented that extensive illegal government monitoring of political activity is still taking place in northern and central California.
I hope that we will learn that the police surveillance of us was nothing more sinister than an aberration and a regrettable mistake, but I believe that a lot of Sonoma folks will want the City Council to formulate policies to ensure that it never happens again.
Dave Henderson

Hospital CEO
Gerlach killed
Cirrus prematurely
Editor: When residents voted for Measure B, the Sonoma Valley Hospital’s parcel tax, did they believe there were three viable options that the coalition was evaluating? That was the official position of our independent analyst, Carl Gerlach. He was quoted at the Feb. 2, 2007 coalition meeting in a local paper thusly; “Gerlach kept alive three options: an in-town hospital with an adjacent outpatient clinic to be built near the current Andrieux Street facility, the Broadway and Napa Road site favored by hospital officials and the privately funded Cirrus Health hospital at Eighth Street East and Napa Road.”
Gerlach said, “You need to keep all of them open until voter preferences are clarified by survey and (election).”
A few days later, he was the hospital’s new CEO, and less than a month later, he secretly and prematurely killed Eighth Street East. Doing so on election day, before the votes were even tallied and over a month before the survey he required, violating voters’ rights and unconscionably thwarting the democratic process.
Voters, local newspapers and even Cirrus – which donated $2,500 to “yes on Measure B” – believed that they were voting to keep all site options viable, based on Gerlach’s above quote. If sufficient opposition to Eighth Street East truly existed, as Gerlach claimed in his letter to Cirrus, hospital insiders would have welcomed the corresponding and very public lack of support and rebuke of Cirrus by petition-signers or voters. The only likely explanation is that Cirrus’ plan was gaining traction. Why else would they choose to deceive Measure B voters with “stealth” tactics as described above?
The reported and admitted use of “stealth” tactics used for Measure B’s success has permeated and poisoned the entire hospital process. Prior “stealth” tactics concerning selection of ballot language are exposed in the attached meeting minutes on pages 3-4 (http://www.svh.com/pdf/minutes_pkg_120506.pdf).
The reason given by Gerlach in the election-day letter to Cirrus for eliminating Eighth Street East indicated that growing voter sentiment would defeat Eighth Street East because it was outside the urban growth boundary. But the poll he supposedly relied upon for that statement would not be conducted until a month after the letter to Cirrus. When that April 2007 coalition poll was finally done, only 9 percent considered the UGB a priority, further discrediting the CEO’s and board’s stated reason and rationale for sending this letter when they did. The original reason they gave necessitated a “stealth” change to what reason the coalition would report for striking down Cirrus’ Eighth Street East site. Page 15 of the coalition’s final recommendation report states, “Surveys confirm that the major objection to the Cirrus Option on Eighth Street East (which has now been withdrawn) is that it would have been owned and operated by a private company.”
Conflicted insiders killed the only site which was completely secured, paid for, and ready to develop in favor of two sites where ownership, cost and other complex problems are, as yet, unresolved.
Additionally, Measure B would have failed if voters knew exactly how much they would be asked to pay. The Coalition’s own April 2007 poll question on cost, regardless of site, showed only 14 percent would support a bond tax of $300+. (A $130 million bond equals $570 in average annual taxes making it a non-starter.) Reducing the size of the first bond they ask for, by co-mingling one-time private investment funds with years of taxes pledged simply guarantees private profits by raising taxes as deficits mount, much less preferred than a fully private facility which Theresa Pahl, special board attorney said could work.
An article Gerlach wrote prior to accepting the $195,000 CEO job is instructive as to his prior unencumbered opinion regarding financially strapped, independent hospitals. http://www.hfsconsultants.com/pages/Winter%202007.pdf
The conflicts are expensive and mounting.
Dennis Hipps

Wrong-colored spheres at arch?
Editor: I wish the artist hired by the county to enhance the arch heading into the Springs on Highway 12 would consider another color for the decorative spheres he has proposed to put there. While I’m sure the blue he chose would be a very pretty color, my fear is that it would evoke thoughts of a malady that I’ve only heard of, being female. Maybe it’s just an urban legend. However, that’s not the metaphor that as a community we want the world to see us as, correct?
Anne Tobin