Candidates go for business vote

WiFi on Sonoma Plaza, sidewalks in the Springs and work programs for teens – those were just some of the ideas floated before local business leaders at the “Election ‘08” breakfast forum sponsored by the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce.
More than 100 people filled the dining room at the Sonoma Golf Course clubhouse Friday on Arnold Drive, including Sonoma Mayor Joanne Sanders, Sonoma County First District Supervisor Valerie Brown and supervisorial candidate Will Pier. Recent Sonoma City Council appointee Laurie Gallian was unable to attend due to illness.
Sanders, who is completing her first four-year term on the Sonoma City Council and will begin another in January, began her talk by coming out in favor of Measures P and Q – respectively, the Sonoma Valley Hospital bond and Sonoma/Marin passenger-rail initiatives. She said the former is a “critical” factor for businesses seeking to recruit and retain employees, while the latter – though not directly passing through the Valley – will boost local tourism through a Napa-to-Petaluma shuttle-bus connection.
Sanders also addressed two perennial Sonoma issues – housing and water – saying that while the state is good at mandating improvements it’s not so good at paying for them: for example, issuing affordable-housing allocations for Sonoma without regard to what’s being built in the Springs. She said she would work to make sure that Valley water issues wouldn’t result in a Sonoma building moratorium.
She also sounded a personal note, saying her entrepreneurial spirit is rooted in her parents’ story: both are immigrants, her father “a proud Mexican man” who worked in the fields and served in the Vietnam War.
“It was not government handouts or subsidized housing programs that got them where they are today … It was the California economy,” Sanders said, emphasizing her opposition to business restrictions and calling the business community “the backbone of our city.”
Brown and Pier then addressed the crowd in turn, with Brown noting the job she’s done and Pier speaking of what he hopes to accomplish.
She praised the Springs Strategic Plan – developed by the Springs Redevelopment Advisory Committee, which she co-created – as “the most extraordinary volunteer work I’ve seen in this community for ages,” saying that sidewalks and bike connections to Sonoma will provide the area with an important economic stimulus.
Brown also said she wants to capitalize on Sonoma Valley’s groundwater management by using it as a model for the rest of the county, and expressed her commitment to energy efficiency by noting that the Eighth Street East wastewater treatment plant became energy self-sufficient last month “and will soon be off the power grid.”
Pier, an El Verano resident who serves on the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission, has worked for 20 years as a general contractor and offered first-hand experience that “the economy is hurting.” He pledged to audit the county budget and “spend more wisely” – especially when it came to rebuilding the county road system, which he would make a priority along with safe bike paths.
Pier also supported Measures P and Q, and while he praised the Valley groundwater study he’d like to see a long-term plan for recharging aquifers before deciding on future development.
“If we don’t know how much water we really have, how can we plan for growth?” Pier asked.