Commentary 9-8-16
Ending the Healdsburg Growth Management Ordinance (GMO) has been promoted with the argument that reduction of regulatory limitations on building market-rate housing will increase the number of affordable housing units available.
The citizens’ ballot?
Bamboozled, hoodwinked and screwed. We, the voters of California, are being set up for a monumental miscarriage of democracy when we go to vote in the Nov. 8 General Election. It’s challenging enough that the ballot contains 17 statewide propositions, the longest ballot in state history. But the real problem lies in the obscure text and the felonious pro and con arguments attached to each question.
Drip Drop Opinions
The Russian River flowed for millions and millions of years, eons before the earliest of Pomo people established fishing villages here 10,000 years ago and called the river Ashokawna.
Common goodness
My husband and I are about to be left behind. I’m talking about something more predictable than the apocalypse: our son will be leaving home in the fall to go to college. We will still have two younger kids at home, so we’re not yet empty nesters, but I nonetheless have a strong sense of nostalgia as I contemplate how quickly time flies and the inevitable changes that are upon our family life.
Words Matter
It’s “back to school” time again and that means shopping trips for new school clothes, buying new notebooks, pens and erasers for the backpack and complaining about how early the first class bell is scheduled to ring.
Differing views on growth management
At a public forum held on July 28 at the Villa Chanticleer, four community members participated in a panel discussion about possible changes to Healdsburg’s Growth Management Ordinance. Their prepared statements are reprinted below. The Tribune welcomes letters to the editor on this important topic, which will be on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Buying the Farm
All sorts of barnyard proverbs and euphemisms could be used to explain the current taxpayers’ dilemma. Not to beat a dead horse, but we’ve repeatedly warned about too many tax increases and bond measures on the next ballot. We don’t want to sound like Chicken Little and claim that the sky is falling, but decades of runaway pension costs are finally coming home to roost. Somebody left the barn door open and all that is left in our taxpayers’ barnyard is a pile of cow pies and horse biscuits.
