Letters to the Editor 11-22-12

Go Tiger football
Editor: Last Thursday night, I had 64 young men to my house for dinner; the entire Analy varsity football team and their coaches. It was the team dinner before their game against Campilindo High School, where more Analy fans than Campilindo fans braved three hours of heavy rain and traffic to watch the most incredible game with Analy winning 38-34. It felt like my 64 sons simply came over for a family dinner. It was a huge honor to host some of the most polite and well mannered young men I’ve ever met (but who can eat you out of house and home). After their team talk around the bonfire, they all hugged me and said thank you.
While Sebastopol was arguing and debating politics and CVS, Analy was winning football games by huge margins.
Head coach Dan Bourdon — quiet and modest coach of the year — has led Analy to the best record in the school’s history. I made a last minute phonecall to Sports Editor Greg Clementi and he sent me some great action photos of some of the players that I printed and gave to the players. I also put every sports article from this year up on the wall for their review.
Thank you for such a great sports section in such a great paper.
Go Tigers!
Dan Davis
Sebastopol
A proud Analy sponsor
More work to do
Editor: Beyond the CVS/Chase project, the new Council will have to address the broader issue of future development. Sebastopol needs an updated General Plan that takes into account new state regulations as well as changed conditions — demographically, environmentally and economically. However, at this point we don’t have the resources to pay for a new plan.
One step the Council should consider taking in the meantime is to adopt clear design standards for the downtown area, which would avoid in the future much of the bitter fighting that has gone on lately. This could be done fairly easily and affordably by utilizing the design standards that had been developed as part of the Northeast Area Specific Plan.
Sebastopol’s Urban Growth Boundary was adopted in 1996 and will expire in 2016. It is not too early to begin looking at extending it for another 20 years. As part of this process there are a number of critical questions that need to be addressed. One is where we draw the line that restricts further annexations. Do we need to pull it in or move it out?
Another important question concerns density. When we adopted the UGB in 1996 it was with the promise that we would “grow up, not out.” Some of us who worked on that campaign believed that to be responsible planetary citizens we have a responsibility to reduce our per capita ecological footprint, not just push the consequences of population growth and resource demand to some other corner of the planet. Increasing the density of our town, if done in the right way, can achieve that and, at the same time, increase our quality of life. If done in the wrong way it can damage the small town character we treasure.
Like nearly every other jurisdiction in California, if not the country, our infrastructure is aging. For many reasons, not the least of which is 1978’s Proposition 13, we don’t have the financial resources to adequately maintain our streets and public parks and buildings. The consequences of allowing this to continue are pretty clear to all of us. We also have unfunded pension liabilities that need to be addressed.
Sales tax revenues, augmented by the proceeds from Measure Y may be starting to rise but we also need to expand our economic base. The new City Council will have to be creative and resourceful in finding ways to encourage and support our local economy, as well as to increase its resilience.
We may only vote every two years, but in a democracy, citizenship is a full-time job. Whether it is at the local, the state or the national level it is our responsibility as citizens to remain engaged and to demand the kind of leadership we need.
Larry Robinson
Sebastopol