Council to nominate south Arnold Drive as open space

The Sonoma City Council will submit a conservation nomination for urgent land protection through the multi-agency FOCUS program.
Short for Focus Our Vision, FOCUS is a regional planning initiative spearheaded by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in coordination with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.
Councilman August Sebastiani sits as a member on ABAG and brought forth the idea of a planning conservation program that protects areas of regional significance based on such uses and values as agriculture, natural resources, watershed, historical, scenic, cultural, recreational, ecological, or ecosystem functions.
Sonoma City Planner David Goodison told city council at its July 18 meeting that individual parcels could not be nominated and land within the city’s sphere of influence is disqualified.
“However, the city could nominate an area outside its boundary,” Goodison said. “This should be an area that could give traction to this process and it has to be a level of public consensus that this is an area that needs to be protected.”
Goodison told the Sonoma Valley Sun that, “The city will submit a nomination for an agriculture/open space area south of Sonoma along Arnold Drive.”
With a regional strategy, the goal of FOCUS is to promote the quality of life and ecological diversity coupled to the accommodation of specific shared-growth concepts within the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area while targeting investment assistance that will protect natural areas and working lands.
As an ongoing process, FOCUS has been working with the Bay Area Open Space Council and the Greenbelt Alliance, which are leading a complementary collaborative process called Green Vision.