In his book Sonoma Battlefield, Joe Costello mentions the rationale Rosewood Hotel used to justify its development project: it will bring tax money to the city coffers and have many multiplier effects to stimulate the economy. Costello also mentions the deceptive methods Rosewood purposefully used to confuse and obfuscate issues in citizen and voter’s minds.
The Rosewood Hotel battle was huge in the recent history of Sonoma and many of the same actors are still around town active as ever. Another book was written about this time titled A Tale of Two Valleys, which describes the efforts of many in the Rosewood Hotel battle to preserve Sonoma’s small town character from becoming over-commercialized like Napa Valley.
What has been at stake all along is a conflict of values. On one hand values centering on money, profit, business and unlimited free markets and on the other human values having to do with small town fabric, environmental integrity, social justice and limits to growth.
In the old days the people’s groups fell back on the same type of arguments they have today. What was missing was the current element of global climate and species extinction urgency. Now the pushback of citizens who want to see limits has a super compelling rationale: sustainability. Gratuitous development and conspicuous consumption is suicide, not sustainable.
But just as with Rosewood we have major efforts to spin the issues and confuse the public as to what is really at stake. Sustainability has suffered a big blow by being turned into a weasel word phrase. In Measure B, hotel proponents made unsustainable appear as sustainable; yes meant no. The wine industry’s sustainability initiative leaves out true cost accounting and seeks to gloss over an unconscionable labor track record, not to mention environmental consequences of deforestation, pesticide/ herbicide pollution and the silting in of local salmon streams. Deceptive economic rationales continue to resurface, the same ones that have led to widespread unsustainable social and environmental outcomes.
It is striking how the same exact issues and scenarios have reoccurred regularly right here in Sonoma in the time since Rosewood. The 2003 Cows Not Casinos, the 2011 Jazz Fest, Measure B, wine tasting on the Plaza and now two hotel projects at once, First Street East by Caymus Capital LLC and Napa Street West by Kenwood Investments LLC.
In the ensuing time period between Rosewood and today, not only has Sonoma become a lot more like Napa, the whole county has been run under by a massive wine tourism bonanza that has failed to be controlled by government in any meaningful way. Land use has rolled over to big wine and the tourism-hospitality combine just like the folks in the Tale of Two Valleys did not want to see happen.
If so many economic benefits accrue to the public from these types of projects, why do we have a living wage and affordable housing crisis? Where’s the beef? Why do all the benefits seem to go only to the 1%? How many times will we be fooled by smooth talk and slick presentations?
The people still get out and push back but it seems there is a fundamental collusion at work between government and big money. This juggernaut is almost impossible to stop. Real public benefits are reduced to a few charity events while an ocean of negative externalities goes ignored.
It is fun to read Sonoma Battlefield because the good guys won. And here we are again in 2016 with more hotels coming at us. Will it ever end? Battlefield Sonoma continues; truth is spoken to power. Stilted and out of proportion economic values are gradually taking over the landscape while the many promises of public benefit remain unfulfilled.