Letters to the Editor 6-13-13

Parking courtesy
Editor: I am a business owner in Sebastopol and have been in operation for six years. I rent a building and a parking lot here in town in conjunction with two other businesses. The parking lot has at least five signs that are displayed in various locations throughout the lot stating that parking is for customers only, and others will be towed at the owner’s expense. Non-customers have been parking in the lot and walking to the bike path or other businesses 100 or more yards away from our stores.
We have repeatedly requested that they move their vehicles so that our customers have room to park in order to shop in our stores. We are annoyed that our parking lot is filled with vehicles and our customers have nowhere to park, which means lost business revenue.
(Recently), the towing company was called to tow a vehicle that had been parked in the lot and the owner was nowhere to be found. I received a tongue lashing from the vehicle owner and how my business would be slandered since I had the vehicle towed.
It is our right and at our discretion to have vehicles towed from the parking lot in which we pay rent on, when the people are not shopping in our establishments. People need to have some courtesy, common sense and read the posted signs, otherwise businesses in this town will not be able to exist.
Dennis Tennier
Sebastopol business owner
Restore library hours
Editor: Since the summer of 2011, hundreds of thousands of Sonoma County residents, including my young children,  have been deprived of the use of our local libraries on Mondays and evenings, due to an unprecedented, ill-advised 25 percent cutback in hours countywide. Libraries feel over-crowded during the reduced hours they are open. The number of children participating in library programs has fallen by more than 12,000 a year.
Seniors, children, parents, and the needy are the hardest hit by this failure of government, for the first known time in our local library system’s 109-year history, to adequately fund this vital public resource. Yet the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors earlier this week refused to vote to help fund the restoration of library hours for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1.
Our supervisors argued that a 1975 Joint Powers agreement between the County and cities created a dedicated real estate tax funding structure, and when real estate values went down, library revenues had to go down as well. They believe that it is not their responsibility to find the $1.3 million in additional funding that it would have taken to restore library hours, and that the County’s $380 million discretionary budget is too tight to come up with emergency funding for our libraries.
If you believe that our County should prioritize funding the restoration of library hours in the future, please call your Supervisor at 565-2261. And join the 1,750 of your neighbors who have signed our county-wide petition at www.RestoreLibraryHours.org.
Jonathan Greenberg
Sebastopol